Migraine, Words and Fiction

“It has often been written that medical students and physicians may improve their skills by reading the literature. Haan mentioned that the well-known Canadian/American physician William Osler (1849–1919), when taking his students to the wards “made explicit analogies to reading skills and the patient as text.” Indeed lessons can be learned from reading novels and Haan’s book provides insights on how this works for the literature in relation to migraine patients. He is a neurologist and experienced headache specialist, who wrote his PhD dissertation on Hereditary Cerebral Amyloid Angiopathy over 30 years ago and recently completed a second (!) PhD dissertation on a subject in the literary sciences. The present book is an adapted version of that dissertation, and it can be recommended to physicians and people interested in the literature.”