The History Of Pain

• Published in: Women & health 1997, Vol.26 (2), p.88
• Main Author: Rey, Roselyne
• Format: Review
• Language: English
• Subjects: Education; Health; Literature; Nonfiction; Preventive medicine
• ISSN: 0363-0242; 1541-0331

Roselyne Rey, translated by Louise Elliott Wallace and by J. A. Cadden and S. W. Cadden. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995. 378 pages (cloth, no price given, notes, bibliography, glossary, index). In its final analysis pain, as we know it, is a human experience. As such, the subject of pain has been the object of much thought and consideration over the ages. We have pondered why pain exists, tried to understand what it is (and what it is not), and what it means. We have learned to talk to each other about pain through the language of literature, art, music, religion, philosophy and science. Roselyne Rey in her book entitled The History of Pain looks at pain through an historical perspective. The book, translated from the French by Louise Elliott Wallace, J. A. Cadden and S. W. Cadden, integrates many diverse sources to achieve a synthesis of ideas about pain that developed and changed as they thread their way through our written history. Using historical measures of time, the author marks off convenient periods where prevailing concepts and thought have influenced thinking about pain. For example, chapters are divided into antiquity, the middle ages, the renaissance, the classical age, the age of enlightenment, the 19th century, etc., which allows the author to capture changes in medical thought, changes in theological thinking, changes in secular thinking, social/economic changes and changes in geopolitical life that are relevant to pain. She seems to weave these influences into her treatment of medical thinking about pain. A good example of this is her fascinating treatment of how disease theory development influenced the meaning and value of pain as interpreted by physicians steeped in the Galenic approach, concurrent with an evolving struggle between religion and secularism. For a complete reprint of this article contact Haworth Press by telephone (1-800-HAWORTH) OR EMail ([e-mail]). Article copyright The Haworth Press, Inc.