Surgeon Major Roehring, of Amberg, reports, in No. 32 of the _Allg. Med.
Centr. Zeit_., April 22, 1882, a case of headache of long standing,
which he cured by salicylate of sodium, which confirms the observations
of Dr. Oehlschlager, of Dantzig, who first contended that we possessed
in salicylic acid one of the most reliable remedies for neuralgia. This
cannot astonish us if we remember that the action of salicylic acid is,
in more than one respect, and especially in its influence on the nervous
centers, analogous to quinine.
While out with the troops on maneuver, Dr. Roehring was called to visit
the sixteen-year old son of a poor peasant family in a neighboring
village. The boy, who gave all evidences of living under bad hygienic
surroundings, but who had shown himself very diligent at school, had
been suffering, from his sixth year, several days every week from the
most intense headache, which had not been relieved by any of the many
remedies tried for this purpose. A careful examination did not reveal
any organic lesion or any cause for the pain, which seemed to be
neuralgic in character, a purely nervous headache. Roehring had just
been reading the observations of Oehlschlager, and knowing, from the
names of the physicians who had been already attending the poor boy,
that all the common remedies for neuralgia had been given a fair trial,
thought this a good opportunity to test the virtue of salicylate of
sodium. He gave the boy, who, in consequence of the severity of the
pain, was not able to leave his bed, ten grains of the remedy every
three hours, and was surprised to see the patient next day in his tent
and with smiling face. The boy admitted that he for years had not been
feeling so well as he did then. The remedy was continued, but in less
frequent doses, for a few days longer; the headache did not return.
Several months later Dr. Roehring wrote to the school-teacher of the
boy, and was informed that the latter had, during all this time,
been totally free of his former pain, that he was much brighter than
formerly, and evidently enjoying the best of health.
It may be worth while to give the remedy a more extensive trial, and the
more so as we are only too often at a loss what to do in stubborn cases
of so-called nervous headache.--_The Medical and Surgical Reporter_.
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