All of this information given above will hopefully help you appreciate how exacting the task of a homeopath is in prescribing for chronic headaches and to understand why we asked all of the questions that we did in the following case.

R.M., age 38, came to see us in March of this year because of five years of chronic headaches. She was tall, thin, and had long blonde hair.The headaches had been getting progres- sively worse and were interfering with her life as a graduate student in an intensive and taxing Tibetan studies program. She was beginning to do research for her dissertation, involving nearly non-stop reading, and wanted to be free of her head- aches. She described two different types of headaches. The type l headache involved severe pain in the temples, occiput, or behind the eyes, pressing in the temples and bursting in the occiput or begind the eyes. They occurred once every month or two, started in the afternoon or evening, and lasted several days. She would experience nausea and vertigo with the headache as well as sensitivity to noise and light and a general crankiness. They would be somewhat better by lying down in a cool, dark place and were aggravated by heat, motion, drinking lots of water, or doing should-stand yoga postures. The type II headache was less intense, but occurred every two weeks. It was characterized by a dull ache across the forehead and resulted from eyestrain and being overtired, both of which were inevitable in her rigorous program of study.

She complained of frequent memory lapses during which whe would forget what she was sup-posed to do or what she had read. She had recently forgotten to administer an exam even though she had been reminded about it the previous evening. This disturbed her considerably. She des-cribed her mind as "dull". When asked a question, she would hear the words, but need to repeat the question in her mind before answering. A review of symptoms revealed the following: She had a history of eczema on the hands, a painful right-sided otitis media several years ago, occa-sional constipation, knee and ankle pain since she jogged regularly, and no gynecologic com- plaints.Her sexual energy was average. She was unmarried and did not want children. She complained of shakiness if she went for a long time without eating, was extremely sensitive to cigarette smoke, and tended to be chilly with cold extremities. Mentally and emotionally she had always been shy, sometimes painfully so, was reserved, a loner, and not overly emotional or sen-timental. She could be perceived by others as being unfeeling and having a cold heart. She was patient with others, but not herself, and became upset if others implied she was stupid. She would take time to evaluate a situation to decided whether or not it was worth speaking up and it would take a lot to make her angry. She expressed that her self-confidence wasn't great and had fear of not succeeding. She had had a number of long-term relationships with men, none of which were totally satisfying and she wondered whether she was cut out for long-lasting relationships. When asked about food desires, she loved hard, cold ice cream and carrots, and hated slimy foods. She had a stronger than average desire for cold drinks. When questioned, she admitted to suffering from chronic tonsillitis as a child and even now had occasional right submandibular swelling.

We use the homeopathic computer program "MacRepertory" to help us analyze our cases.