Aretaeus on Migraine and Headache

Aretaeus of Cappadocia's classification of headache has been referred to for many centuries. Several Latin translations and an English translation (1856) of his books have been published in the past. We translated the pertinent texts on headache from the Greek text as published by Hude in 1958. In this paper, we present an annotated translation preceded by an outline of contemporary knowledge of headache from Celsus’ De Medicina. Although symptomatic headache was most probably involved in the types of headache identified by Aretaeus and the making of retrospective diagnoses is hazardous, the terms heterocrania and cephalea may be compared with what today we would call migraine and tension type headache respectively.