Effect of Ergotamine Tartrate on Pressure of Cerebrospinal Fluid and Blood During Migraine Headache

During the last few years a half-dozen reports have appeared in the French and German literature concerning the value of ergotamine tartrate (gynergen) in the treatment of migraine. A summary of the literature as well as of the therapeutic results obtained with forty-five of his own patients has been made recently by Lennox.¹All the authors who have studied the subject agree that in the great majority of patients suffering from migraine headache the injection of ergotamine tartrate cuts short the attack, an action which seems to be specific, or nearly so, for headache of the migraine type. The authors who have reported these dramatic clinical results have offered theories but little or no evidence concerning the mechanism by which ergotamine acts. A study of the physiologic effects of ergotamine on patients during a migraine headache might, we thought, uncover the cause of the relief and hence suggest the