Word: pained
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...What is pain? Everybody knows because everybody has suffered it, but nobody can tell anybody else. Dictionaries are hopeless.* The late Sir Charles Sherrington, who collected no fewer than 22 honorary doctorates for his brilliant researches in physiology, called pain "the psychical adjunct of an imperative protective reflex." That may be fine for another physiologist, but it is no help to a man with a nail through his foot. Although pain is what drives most patients to a doctor, it is the symptom to which, all too often, doctors pay least attention. One good reason: it is the subject about...
...beam a little light into this area of ignorance, the Journal of Chronic Diseases last week devoted its entire issue (110 editorial pages) to pain and its relief. The learned contributing experts are far from unanimous on how to define or measure pain, but they agree on one thing: something should be done about...
Eskimos Too. The University of Oregon's Dr. Frederick P. Haugen reports that dogs raised from puppyhood in a solitary, restricted environment, so that they cannot hurt themselves or be hurt, do not act as though they feel pain when tested in early maturity. Even Sherrington's "imperative protective reflex" is missing-these animals have to learn to stay away from a hot stove, and it takes repeated burns to teach them. Dr. Haugen comments: "The influence of past experience and learning is evident in any group of patients as one observes the notable differences in their reactions...
Researchers have been busy with the distinction between pain itself and a sufferer's reaction to it. Why does a Szechwan coolie grit his teeth and stifle his cries when, with no anesthetic, his leg is sawed off, while a Madison Avenue account man leaps out of his grey flannel suit at the first brrr of the drill on a heavily novocained tooth? Does a Chinese feel pain less than an Occidental? Probably not, according to Dr. James D. Hardy, who (with Dr. Harold G. Wolff and Helen Goodell) pioneered in measuring pain on a "dolorimeter" at New York...
...Cowdry urges old folks to be philosophical about it. "It's not a terrible surprise," he says. "Usually you find that when death is ready for you, you're ready for death. And it's a medical fact that death comes less unpleasantly in later years. Pain is so much less acute. Most old people simply drop off to sleep...