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Carroll’s Headaches
Migraine aura symptoms gave rise to “Adventures in Wonderland”
Migraine aura may have been the inspiration for Lewis Carroll’s descriptions of ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,’ physicians suggest in a letter published in the April 17th issue of The Lancet.
Coining the term ‘Alice in Wonderland syndrome’ to refer to certain hallucinations specific to migraine, Lippman first suggested in the 1950s that Carroll may have used his own migraine experiences in writing ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ (1865) and the sequel ‘Through the Looking Glass’ (1871).
In recent years, however, this theory has been refuted because no mention of migraine could be found in the writer’s journals before he wrote the Alice stories. Now, Drs. Klaus Podoll of the University of Technology in Aachen, Germany, and Derek Robinson of Berkshire, UK, report previously overlooked clues to support the relationship.
Migraine News, April 1999
