November 01, 2003
A U. S. Doctor has come up with a http://www.theage.com.au" href="http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/11/01/1067597190093.html">new diagnosis:
Dr Howard J Bennett, of George Washington University Medical Centre, hasrecently diagnosed "Hogwarts headaches" in three young patients.
There is no hope left for this country once we start considering self-inflicted discomfort as a medical condition. The next step is getting Worker's Compensation to cover these types of health problems. People could play Nintendo all night long and then call in sick without guilt because of blurry vision or an aching hand.
One of the youngsters also suffered neck and wrist pain after lying down formany hours reading JK Rowling's latest offering, he said.
In a letter to the New England Medical Journal, the doctor wrote, "During the past several months, I have evaluated three children between eight and 10 years of age who presented with a two- to three-day history of generalised headaches.
"In each case, the headache was dull and the pain fluctuated throughout the day. One patient also reported neck and wrist pain."
The children did not have a history of such symptoms and the only connectionappeared to be that all were reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix at the time.
