ital defect, not so
much of the nervous system as of the entire body, by which the poisons
normally produced in its processes fail to be neutralized and got rid
of, and gradually accumulate until they saturate the system to such a
degree as to produce a furious explosion of pain. This defect may quite
possibly be in one of the ductless glands or in some of the internal
secretions, rather than in the nervous system.

Obviously, after what has been said of the world-wide causation of
headache, to attempt to discuss its treatment would be as absurd as to
undertake to advise what should be done for the relief of hunger, for
"that tired feeling," or for a pain in the knee. The treatment for a
headache due to an inflammation or tumor of the brain would, of course,
be wide as the poles from that which would relieve an ordinary fatigue
or indigestion pain. Besides, it is utterly irrational and often harmful
to attempt _to treat any headache as such_. That is the open road to the
morphine habit and drug addictions of all sorts. Remedies--and there are
plenty of them--which simply relieve the pain without doing anything to
remove its cause, merely make the latter state of that individual worse
than the first. Headache is always and everywhere nature's vivid warning
that something is going wrong, like the shrieking of a wagon-axle or the
clatter of a broken cog in machinery.

There is, however, fortunately one remedy which alone will cure
ninety-nine per cent of all headaches, and that is rest. The first thing
an intelligent machinist does when squeaking or rattling begins is to
stop the machinery. This has the double advantage of preventing the
damage from going any further and of enabling him to get at the cause.
Headache, like pain anywhere, is nature's imperative order _to Halt_, at
least long enough to find out what you are doing to yourself that you
shouldn't. It makes little difference what you take for your headache,
so long as you follow it up by lying down for an hour or two, or, better
still, by going to bed for the remainder of the day and sleeping through
until the next morning. If more headaches were treated in this way there
would not only be fewer headaches, but two-thirds of the risks of
nervous breakdown, collapse, insomnia, and chronic degenerative changes
in the liver, kidneys, and blood-vessels would be avoided.

This, of course, is a counsel of perfection, and incapable of general
application for the sterne