A
Washington doctor warned that he has seen three children complain
of headaches caused by the physical stress of relentlessly plowing
through the epic 870-page adventure.
Call them Hogwarts headaches, named after the wizard school that
Harry attends.
Dr. Howard Bennett of George Washington University Medical Centre
wrote in a letter to this week's New England Journal of Medicine
that the three children, ages 8 to 10, experienced a dull headache
for two or three days.
Each had spent many hours reading "Harry Potter and the
Order of the Phoenix."
After ruling out other potential causes, Bennett told his patients
to give their eyes a rest. But the spell cast by the book was
clearly too powerful.
"The obvious cure for this malady -- that is, taking a break
from reading -- was rejected by two of the patients," Bennett
said, adding that the children took acetaminophen instead.
In each case, the headache went away only after the patient turned
the final page.
"Order of the Phoenix," the fifth book in the series,
has nearly three times as many pages as "Harry Potter and
the Sorcerer's Stone," the first book, and Rowling still
plans two more tomes.
"If this escalation continues as Rowling concludes the saga,
there may be an epidemic of Hogwarts headaches in the years to
come," Bennett predicted.
(Agencies)
Updated: 2003-11-03 01:00