Word: paines
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Periodically over the centuries, the area known as the Borinage gives a twitch of excruciating pain, and all Belgium suffers. Death has always been close by in that flat, depressing southern region...
...relief of pain is obviously one of the main functions of physicians," Boston Psychiatrist Frank Ervin noted last week, then added: "Ironically, it's one of the things we do least well-partly because we don't understand it." But Dr. Ervin is one of a Massachusetts General Hospital research team that is using ultramodern brain surgery both to subdue the severest forms of pain and to learn more about pain's mechanisms...
Several diseases, of which cancer is the commonest, sometimes produce pain so continuous and intense that the most potent narcotics will not relieve it. One approach has been to cut white nerve bundles in the front part of the brain (lobotomy or leucotomy). This makes many victims better able to tolerate their pain, even though its actual intensity may not be reduced. Greatest danger: an overall dulling of the personality. More radical but also more logical is an attack through the thalamus, part of the central nervous system which relays many pain impulses to the higher perception centers. Biggest drawback...
Some patients have felt short-lived pain relief merely from implantation of the electrode. But all eventually need stage three: a week after implantation, the doctors send a gentle electric current through the electrode to find out whether the patient feels a tingling in his fingers, arm or foot (always on the side opposite the electrode). This gives yet another check on placement. Finally they use a strong enough current, under anesthesia, to destroy a small part of the thalamus...
...Time is the most valuable thing in life, and I don't want to waste it," he said once. Feeling a stab of pain on the eve of his latest mission to Europe (see The Administration), he told a close friend: "If it isn't cancer, then I feel the trip is too important to put off. If it is cancer, then any additional discomfort doesn't fundamentally matter anyway...