The fortification spectra of migraine.

Finding a patron Fortunately for his patients and his peace of mind, Crabbe decided after a few years and much agonising to quit medicine and go to London to venture all as a poet. In 1780, after a difficult interview with his old father, he sailed in a sloop to London, took cheap lodgings in the city, and began to hawk his abundant collection of poems round the booksellers and literary patrons. For a whole year there were no takers. Crabbe's money ran out as fast as the letters of rejection piled up. In order to eat he had to sell clothes, books, and a case of his redundant surgical instruments. Even so, the day came when "absolute want stared him in the face ... the best he could hope for was, dismissing all his dreams of literary distinction, to find the means of daily bread in the capacity of a druggist's assistant." Characteristically, he tried one last fling for freedom. He sent a letter to the statesman Edmund Burke, from one "without a friend, without employment, without bread," enclosing an assortment ofhis poems and imploring the great man to see him. The happy outcome is best told in the words of Crabbe's son's biography: Mr Burke... immediately appointed an hour for my father to call upon him at his house in London; and the short interview that ensued entirely, and for ever, changed the nature ofhis worldly fortunes. .. He went into Mr Burke's room a poor young adventurer, spurned by the opulent, and rejected by the publishers, his last shilling gone, and all but his last hope with it; he came out virtually secure of all the good fortune that, by successive steps, afterwards fell to his lot. After his short talk with the starving poet Burke wrote to his friend Joshua Reynolds, "He has the mind and manners of a gentleman." Crabbe was immediately asked to stay at Burke's country home in Beaconsfield, where he was treated as one of the family, provided with rooms and books, and introduced to Charles James Fox and Reynolds, who later invited Crabbe to meet Dr Johnson. The literary networks had begun to operate. Poet and churchman Burke continued to treat Crabbe as a favourite son. With the great man as his friend and adviser, Crabbe rapidly got into print. He also got into the church, that useful refuge for writers …