Prevalence of Headache in Tulp's Observationes Medicae (1641) with a Description of Cluster Headache

Abstract

In 1641, Nicolaas Tulp, a well-known physician from Amsterdam, published his Observationes Medicae, in which medical knowledge and practice in that period is described in more than 200 systematically organized case histories. Next to symptomatic headaches he mentioned two different types of “recurring headache” based on the characteristics of the pain and reaction to contemporary treatment: migraine and, probably, cluster headache.