The Worst of Evils: The Fight Against PainYale University Press, 2006 M01 1 - 547 pages This riveting book takes the reader around the globe and through the centuries to discover how different cultures have sought to combat and treat physical pain. With colorful stories and sometimes frightening anecdotes, Dr. Thomas Dormandy describes a checkered progression of breakthroughs, haphazard experiments, ignorant attitudes, and surprising developments in human efforts to control pain. Attitudes toward pain and its perception have changed, as have the means of pain relief and scientific understanding. Dr. Dormandy offers a thoroughly fascinating, multi-cultural history that culminates with a discussion of today’s successes--and failures--in the struggle against pain. The book’s exploration is fused with accounts of the development of specific methods of pain relief, including the use of alcohol, plants, hypnosis, religious faith, stoic attitudes, local anesthesia, general anesthesia, and modern analgesics. Dr. Dormandy also looks at the most recent advances in pain clinics and palliative care for patients with terminal disease as well as the prospects for loosening pain’s grip in the future. |
Contents
INTRODUCTION | 1 |
THE MISTS OF HISTORY | 7 |
A gift of the gods | 9 |
The grape and the poppy | 16 |
Roots barks fruit and leaves | 25 |
Pain denied | 34 |
Pain ignored | 41 |
The heresies | 46 |
Mr Anaesthetist | 261 |
Conflicting views | 276 |
The rights of pain | 282 |
Who needs an anaesthetic? | 288 |
THE BEGINNING OF THE MODERN | 299 |
The new physiology | 301 |
The new pathology | 314 |
The acute abdomen | 331 |
Healing and holiness | 51 |
Islam | 61 |
The age of the cathedrals | 73 |
Pain exalted | 83 |
SCIENTIFIC STIRRINGS | 87 |
Rebirth rediscovery and reform | 89 |
Going to war | 103 |
Foundations | 111 |
Heavenly dreams | 124 |
Animal magnetism | 137 |
Pneumatic medicine | 151 |
Laughing gas | 162 |
The terror of the knife | 168 |
Hospital disease | 182 |
PAINLESS SURGERY | 187 |
To the threshold | 189 |
A gentleman from the South | 202 |
This Yankee dodge | 208 |
In Gower Street | 227 |
And beyond | 231 |
Chloroform | 243 |
The shape of dreams | 249 |
Old drugs new drugs | 339 |
The bark of the willow | 350 |
Cocaine | 365 |
High Victorian pain | 377 |
The power of pain control | 390 |
YESTERYEARS | 397 |
Seminal Years | 399 |
The gift of Barbara | 412 |
Tic douloureux | 422 |
Twilight Sleep | 429 |
Dolorism | 437 |
Renoir | 444 |
Pills and poisons | 453 |
The surgery of pain | 466 |
The schism | 473 |
Pain mechanisms | 480 |
Pain clinics | 488 |
Hospices | 491 |
EPILOGUE | 500 |
503 | |
528 | |
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Common terms and phrases
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References to this book
Calomel in America: Mercurial Panacea, War, Song and Ghosts Richard M. Swiderski Limited preview - 2008 |