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Harold George Wolff (May 28, 1898 – February 21, 1962) was an American doctor, neurologist and pseudoscientist who conducted intentionally harmful and brain-damaging pseudoscientific human experimentation. He is generally considered the father of modern headache research, and a pioneer in the study of psychosomatic illness.
Harold Wolff was born on May 26, 1898, in New York City, the only child of Louis Wolff, a Catholic illustrator, and Emma Recknagel Wolff, Lutheran. He was educated at City College, from which he graduated in 1918, aged 20. After graduating, he worked in a government-supported fishery trying to improve drying fish. He considered becoming a priest before deciding to take up medicine at Harvard Medical School, where he received his M.D. in 1923. [1]
After medical training at New York’s Roosevelt Hospital and Bellevue Hospital Center, he started to study neuropathology with Harry Forbes and Stanley Cobb. In 1928 he travelled abroad, spending a year in Graz, in Austria, with Otto Loewi, and then with Ivan Pavlov in Leningrad, in Russia. Returning to America, he moved to the Psychiatry ward at Phipps Clinic of Johns Hopkins University, working with psychiatrist Adolf Meyer. [2]
In 1932, Wolff returned Boston and became the head of neurology ward, supervised by Eugene Dubois. He later became a professor of medicine and chief neurologist at New York Hospital – Cornell Medical Center. [3]
He was defined a “combination of administrator and investigator”. [4] Wolff’s pupils described him as a superb clinician, a wise man who exercised vigorously and competitively, sometimes highly obsessive. He used to teach by example, in fact his motto was: "No day without its experiment". [5]
During his last years he devoted much of his energy to the work of the “Academy of Religion and Mental Health” and, after a lifelong agnosticism, became a member of “Christ Church (Episcopal)” in Riverdale, New York.
Harold Wolff’s first major contribution was the elucidation of the mechanism of migraine and other headaches of vascular origin. He was the first neurologist that supported the hypothesis that the aura arises from a vasoconstriction and the headache from a vasodilatation. [6] In fact, vasodilators (amylnitrite, carbon dioxide) abolished the aura temporarily or persistently, and vasoconstrictors (norepinephrine, ergotamine tartrate, caffeine) induced the aura. [7]
Dr. Wolff was also interested in understanding the mind – body relationship, and established a separate category of illness to be defined as psychosomatic. There is a connection between nervous system and bodily diseases like peptic ulcer, ulcerative colitis, hypertension, etc. [8]
However, Wolff's work on migraines also reveals sexism. In his discussion of patients, he tended to focus on his male patients, who he described as being ambitious, efficient, perfectionistic, and successful. He thought that they were working too hard; they should relax more and get more exercise. In contrast, women patients were described as inadequate, unsatisfied, and frigid. In women, unlike men, migraines were pathologized. [9]
Dr. Wolff also headed the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology, which received funding from the CIA to investigate the manipulation of human behavior. [10] Dr. Wolff was a key participant in the CIA's MKUltra program, conducting research to discover effective interrogation techniques. He collaborated with the CIA to collect information on a wide variety of torture methods, and stated the intention that his research program would:
...assemble, collate, analyze and assimilate this information and will then undertake experimental investigations designed to develop new techniques of offensive/defensive intelligence use ... Potentially useful secret drugs (and various brain damaging procedures) will be similarly tested in order to ascertain the fundamental effect upon human brain function and upon the subject's mood ... Where any of the studies involve potential harm of the subject, we expect the Agency to make available suitable subjects and a proper place for the performance of the necessary experiments.
— Dr. Harold Wolff, Cornell University Medical School [11]
In 1934 Dr. Wolff married the well-known painter Isabel Bishop, and had a son, Remsen N. Wolff. In 1958 he was named the first occupant of the “Anne Parrish Titzel Chair” in Medicine at the Cornell University Medical College.
Harold Wolff died on February 21, 1962, in Washington D.C., of a cerebral vascular disease. [12]
Migraine is a genetically-influenced complex neurological disorder characterized by episodes of moderate-to-severe headache, most often unilateral and generally associated with nausea and light and sound sensitivity. Other characterizing symptoms may include nausea, vomiting, cognitive dysfunction, allodynia, and dizziness. Exacerbation of headache symptoms during physical activity is another distinguishing feature.
Headache, also known as cephalalgia, is the symptom of pain in the face, head, or neck. It can occur as a migraine, tension-type headache, or cluster headache. There is an increased risk of depression in those with severe headaches.
Migraine is the first book written by Oliver Sacks, a well-known New York City-based neurologist and author. The full title of the first edition was Migraine - Evolution of a Common Disorder. The book was written in 1967, mostly over a nine-day period, and first published in 1970. A revised and updated version was published in 1992.
Visual snow syndrome (VSS) is an uncommon neurological condition in which the primary symptom is that affected individuals see persistent flickering white, black, transparent, or colored dots across the whole visual field.
An aura is a perceptual disturbance experienced by some with epilepsy or migraine. An epileptic aura is actually a minor seizure.
Macdonald Critchley CBE was a British neurologist. He was former president of the World Federation of Neurology, and the author of over 200 published articles on neurology and 20 books, including The Parietal Lobes (1953), Aphasiology, and biographies of James Parkinson and Sir William Gowers.
Scintillating scotoma is a common visual aura that was first described by 19th-century physician Hubert Airy (1838–1903). Originating from the brain, it may precede a migraine headache, but can also occur acephalgically, also known as visual migraine or migraine aura. It is often confused with retinal migraine, which originates in the eyeball or socket.
A concha bullosa is a pneumatized (air-filled) cavity within a nasal concha, also known as a turbinate. Bullosa refers to the air-filled cavity within the turbinate. It is a normal anatomic variant seen in up to half the population. Occasionally, a large concha bullosa may cause it to bulge sufficiently to obstruct the opening of an adjacent sinus, possibly leading to recurrent sinusitis and various head pains related to areas innervated by the trigeminal nerve. In such a case the turbinate can be reduced in size by endoscopic nasal surgery (turbinectomy). The presence of a concha bullosa is often associated with deviation of the nasal septum toward the opposite side of the nasal cavity.
The classification of all headaches, including migraines, is organized by the International Headache Society, and published in the International Classification of Headache Disorders (ICHD). The current version, the ICHD-3 beta, was published in 2013.
Preventive treatment of migraine can be an important component of migraine management. The goals of preventive therapy are to reduce the frequency, painfulness, and/or duration of migraine attacks, and to increase the effectiveness of abortive therapy. Another reason to pursue prevention is to avoid medication overuse headache (MOH), otherwise known as rebound headache, which can arise from overuse of pain medications, and can result in chronic daily headache. Preventive treatments of migraine include medications, nutritional supplements, lifestyle alterations, and surgery. Prevention is recommended in those who have headaches more than two days a week, cannot tolerate the medications used to treat acute attacks, or those with severe attacks that are not easily controlled.
Anne MacGregor is a New Zealand-born British medical researcher and clinician based in London. She is a leading researcher in the field of hormonal effects on migraine.
Migraine is often hereditary. It is estimated that 60% of migraine cases are caused by genetics. The role of natural selection in the development of migraines is not known. Fitness-impairing disorders, including migraines, tend to disappear as a result of natural selection, and their frequency decreases to near the rate of spontaneous mutation. However, it is estimated that migraines affect 15-20% of the population and is increasing. This could suggest that a central nervous system (CNS) susceptible to severe, intermittent headache has been linked to an important survival or reproductive advantage. Five possible evolutionary explanations exist: i) migraine as a defence mechanism, ii) migraine as a result of conflicts with other organisms, iii) migraine as a result of novel environmental factors, iv) migraine as a compromise between genetic harms and benefits, and v) headache as a design constraint. These considerations allow the treatment and prevention of migraine to be approached from an evolutionary medicine perspective.
Frank Clifford Rose was a British neurologist, active in several journals and societies related to the specialty of neurology and its history, whose research contributed to the understanding of motor neurone disease, stroke and migraine. He developed an emergency stroke ambulance service with early neuroimaging, allowing for the detection of early reversible brain damage. In 1974, he established what would later be known as the Princess Margaret Migraine Clinic, a specialist clinic for headache at Charing Cross Hospital, where in 1965 he became their first appointed consultant neurologist.
Edward Liveing was an English physician who published a theory of migraine pathogenesis in his book On Megrim.
Michel D. Ferrari is a Swiss neurologist and professor of neurology at Leiden University and Leiden University Medical Center. He was a winner of the 2009 Spinoza Prize. He is considered to be the foremost migraine expert of the Netherlands, as well as one of the six top scientist in the field worldwide.
James Waldo Lance AO, CBE (1926–2019), often referred to as James Lance and James W. Lance, was an Australian neurologist. He was the founder of the School of Neurology at the University of New South Wales and president of the International Headache Society in 1987–89, and a "world authority on the diagnosis and treatment" of headache and migraine.
Menstrual migraine is the term used to describe both true menstrual migraines and menstrually related migraines. About 7%–14% of women have migraines only at the time of menstruation. These are called true menstrual migraines. Most female migraineurs experience migraine attacks throughout the menstruation cycle with an increased number perimenstrually, these are referred to as menstrually related or menstrually triggered migraine.
The Human Ecology Fund was a CIA-funded operation through the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology, a "front group" set up to support covert research on brainwashing techniques and “truth drugs” in the 1950s. It was also connected to research in the area of anthropology.
Peter GoadsbyFRS FRACP FRCP is an Australian neuroscientist who is Director of the National Institute for Health Research - Wellcome Trust King’s Clinical Research Facility and Professor of Neurology at King's College London. His research has focused particularly on the mechanism and alleviation of migraine and cluster headaches.
Christopher J. Boes is an American neurologist and historian of medicine. He holds the titles of professor of neurology, professor of history of medicine, director of the W. Bruce Fye Center for the History of Medicine, at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, and since 2022 is the Mayo Clinic Designated Institutional Official (DIO). His research focuses on the management of headache, including migraine and trigeminal autonomic cephalalgias. His work in the field of history of medicine includes research on Sir William Gowers, Sir William Osler, Bayard Taylor Horton, Mary Broadfoot Walker, Betty Clements and Harry Lee Parker.
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