Book Review

Title: Perspectives in Research on Headache.Editor(s): Kenneth Holroyd, Barbara Schlote and Helmut Zenz.Publisher: C.J. Hogrefe, Inc. Lewiston, New York, and Toronto 1983.Pages: 234Price: Not specified.

These are the proceedings of an international colloquium on headache which took place at the Universityof Ulm, in Germany, in 1982.

The participants were mainly from Germany, though there were workers from California, Ohio, andCanada. The orientation of the conference was primarily behavioral as witnessed by the heavy representationfrom the psychologists, but there were contributions from physicians and physiologists.

The volume is divided into four sections: basic research on headache and pain; classification anddiagnosis of headache; medical treatments of headache; and psychological treatments of headaches.

The quality and scope of the individual papers is variable. Some of the papers, such as that on"neuropeptides and pain" is an overview of the entire subject, with relatively little in the way of original work.Other contributions stress the work of the authors and minimize the review aspect.

Published proceedings have both advantages and disadvantages, and this volume has both. Thedisadvantages are that the quality of the individual contributions tends to be uneven, that some of the papersare a little dated, and that the work as a whole is not as cohesive as a more organized one or two author textwould be.

In the case of this particular book, however, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. The majoradvantage is that this book allows us an opportunity to see what our German colleagues are doing withoutsubjecting us to the necessity of going through the German literature. The quality of translation is excellentand the visual format of the book (typeface, illustrations, etc.,) is adequate. The book would have beenimproved by insisting that each contributor provide a synopsis of his paper which could be printed at the top ofthe articles; most medical journals utilize this format because they realize that not every reader wants to readevery article word-by-word, and no reader likes wading through a couple of pages of print before he realizesthat the subject matter and thrust of that article are not what he wants.

On balance, it is a worthwhile publication. Not many of our readers would buy it for their personal libraries,but most would want it available in their hospital or university libraries for reference purposes.

John Edmeads, M.D.