Impression of scintillating scotoma occurring in an artist

Scintillating scotoma is the most common visual aura preceding migraine. This depiction is showing the distorted field alone; it does not depict the normal parts of the field of vision.

A scotoma is any area of alteration in the field of vision. Some are due to defects in the eye or the optic nerves, but scintillating scotomas are not. They are caused by migraines (or many other possible causes) interfering with the processing abilities of the occipital cortex. The scintillating scotoma flickers and blurs vision, but is never dark. It can hinder ability to read and drive, among other things.

Clinical Lectures on Diseases of the Eye. J. Elliot Colburn, 1902.

666 Salve: for head or chest colds, headache or neuralgia, irritation of throat or nasal passages due to colds.

The devil will fix your catarrh and cold! Just rub him on your chest!

treselegant:

Washington Times 1906.

There was a weird period between about 1900 until the first Pure Food act (which actually didn’t affect most of these laxatives…they were naturopathic quackery, but they didn’t usually have serious drugs in them) that “biliousness” was considered a major cause of headaches, and tons of cures for constipation were marketed as headache cures.
The concept and marketing of laxative headache cures was around for a long time before it exploded at the turn of the century, and actually was still not terribly uncommon even after the explosion died down…there are some fantastic retro ads for laxative headache cures from the Golden Age of radio.