Hey You Kids! Put Those Books Down and Get Back to Your GameBoys, Right Now!

'Hogwarts headaches' plague young readers of Harry Potter

Rob Stein, Washington Post
Thursday, October 30, 2003
Aside from Lord Voldemort, the Forbidden Forest and the Dementors, young fans of the wildly popular Harry Potter books apparently have one more thing to worry about: "Hogwarts headaches."

Howard Bennett, a pediatrician in Washington, D.C., was alerted to the peril when three patients, ages 8 to 10, came to him in June complaining they had been suffering from a headache for the past two or three days.

"In each case, the headache was dull, and the pain fluctuated throughout the day," Bennett wrote in a letter published in today's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. ...

"On further questioning, it was determined that each child had spent many hours reading J.K. Rowling's latest book in the Harry Potter series," Bennett wrote in the letter, which journal editors titled "Hogwarts Headaches – Misery for Muggles." ...

"The presumed diagnosis for each child was a tension headache brought on by the effort required to plow through an 870-page book. The obvious cure for this malady – that is, taking a break from reading – was rejected by two of the patients, who preferred acetaminophen instead," Bennett wrote.

(Via SF Gate)