Table Talk: Headache

     Last year I read The Oxford Dictionary of Saints, in search of interesting characters to use in conversations, collage icons, and written meditations. I read the book two ways simultaneously, from front to end keeping track of my place with a bus transfer slip, and by consulting an appendix that listed the calendar of feasts for the saints of the particular day I was reading. I found characters to discuss with a friend and ideas to enrich the visual detail of my collages. Also, I found my attention captured by various ills related to massage, especially headaches and the saints appealed to for their cure.

     The lives and experiences of several saints seemed connected to particular kinds of headaches. For example, St. Stephen, a deacon in Jerusalem in the earliest years of the church and one of the first martyrs, was killed by stoning. In the later Middle Ages he was invoked against headaches. The headache connection was not immediately clear to me. Perhaps it was related to the saint’s social-work responsibility as a deacon in the church. He was assigned distribution of food to indigent church members and dealt with the conflicts that arose when one faction thought their widows were being shorted in the daily dole when compared with the handouts to others. I’ve always thought being yelled at by people for doing nice things to help them would give me a stress headache. Of course, the saint may have been prayed to because of the image of having a rock strike one’s head, for he was martyred by stones thrown by an angry crowd. What a headache that would surely cause.

     I read with fascination about St. Gereon, a Fourth Century martyr of Cologne and one of fifty soldiers of the Theban Legion who were put to death for the name of Christ. Like other saints who were beheaded, he was invoked against headaches and migraine. Surely, prayers to Gereon and the others were for help with headaches of the sharpest variety, the ones that feel like they are going to take your head right off your shoulders.

     Then there was St. Armel, a martyr of the Sixth century from South Wales. He was invoked to cure headaches, fever, colic, gout, and rheumatism. Hospitals sometimes made him their patron. One could pray to St. Armel for relief from a headache that accompanies some other malady.

     The accounts and traditions of these saints and others suggest some ideas and images. A clinic in my neighborhood advertises massage for “Headache Relief.” I imagine the main hallway there as being lined with icons of headache saints. These bruised and beheaded patron saints receive the requests of the hurting clients as they make their way back to the therapy rooms. The saints also may remind the therapists of a variety of ways they can treat their patients.

     At school I learned that the trapezius muscles--upper, middle, and lower--are sometimes called the headache triangle. Perhaps someone could invoke the three persons of the Trinity (were they Trinitarian) as they work these three muscles. Another therapist may wish to invoke the trio of Saints Stephen, Gereon, and Armel. Such a massage could serve nicely as a meditation, but one must watch out and not get so enthusiastic in the work as to increase the pain. Headaches are tricky things to heal.

     Most headaches respond to massage therapy. The palpation of muscles changes what happens chemically within the muscles. The stress is reduced both by muscles coming out of spasm and by the effect of having one’s body touched. The communication calms the whole person and stimulates the release of hormones or other chemicals that make one feel better. Of course, there are headaches related to serious underlying pathology. In such cases, massage may not be helpful. A doctor should be called for and many prayers made to the headache saints.