Word: reliefs
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Stay the Knife. Technically, the total suppression of pain comes only with anesthesia, which cannot be prolonged. The lighter state of analgesia, or relief of pain without loss of consciousness, is far more difficult to achieve. For cancer patients with intractable pain of indisputably physical origin, neurosurgeons have devised a number of radical operations. One of the commonest, for pain anywhere below the neck, is cordotomy-literally, cutting the spinal cord-a remedy that is less drastic than it sounds. In the standard operation, the cord is exposed and a small cut is made in the nerve bundles controlling...
Many neurosurgeons would stay the knife if they could, and are joining with pharmacologists to develop better ways of relieving pain with drugs. As many as 65% of tic douloureux victims can be treated effectively, says Crue, with drugs originally designed to control epileptic seizures. For the relief of severe pain of virtually every kind, morphine and its synthetic analogues remain the most potent drugs known,* but all are highly addicting and need to be taken in stepped-up doses to maintain a constant level of analgesia. Supposedly nonaddicting substitutes are exultantly reported almost every year by research chemists...
...newest and most significant advances in relief and control of pain have come through the side door, from psychiatry. Three in number, they involve the use of psychotropic drugs, the application of standard psychotherapeutic techniques, and hypnosis. First of the drugs to find favor was chlorpromazine (Thorazine), used to reduce the severe anxiety of patients with advanced cancer. Serendipitously, it was found that when their anxiety was lessened, so was their perception of pain -though not necessarily the underlying sensation. Many a patient said: "Doctor, I still feel the pain, but it doesn't bother me so much...
...exodus of Harvard professors to the Front for "reconstruction" left many courses bracketed in the catalogue, especially in the German Department. Many of the professors were serving on relief missions and boundary dispute conferences...
Take, for example, the relationship between the New York City Department of Social Services and a relief client named David Davis. With supporting testimony from three doctors that his wife had asthma, he applied to the department for an air conditioner. Although 99% of the city's relief recipients do not have air conditioning, officials decided that the request fitted a vague legal definition of "medically approved special needs" and approved it. Nothing succeeds like success so Davis then persuaded doctors to prescribe "special therapeutic experiences," for which the kindly welfare officials agreed to provide extra stipends; Davis spent...