Few chronic ailments result in as many trips to medical
practitioners in search of relief as the migraine headache. As
many as one in eight people suffers at some time from migraines,
experiencing the sensation of having a Mack truck drive through
the head: pounding, seething pain, often accompanied by nausea
and vomiting, that makes it difficult to get through the day, go
to sleep, or relate to fellow human beings. Of the many herbs
that have been called upon over the centuries to counteract the
painful, often debilitating symptoms of migraines, the most
thoroughly researched has been feverfew (Tanacetum parthenium).
While headaches—migraine or otherwise—are often a result of the
stress of modern life, they are certainly nothing new to human
experience, nor is the use of feverfew as a treatment. John
Goodyer’s 1655 translation of the materia medica of Dioscorides
(the first-century Greek physician who served as a physician in
the Roman army) states that feverfew is good for
“melancholicall”; we’d call it “he