The Neihart herald. [volume] (Neihart, Mont.) 1890-1901, 1897-06-26
n USES OF PAIN.
May Be Safely Reduced as civiiiza-

Inc Statement VI LII. .. weir
Mitchell, in his address on 1.-THE
Birth and Death of Pain" at the
Boston celebration of the semicen-
tennial of anesthesia, that the pur-
pose of pain is "a riddle to which
earth can give no answer, is called
In question by the editor of The
Hospital in a leading article. For
the editor the use of pain, far from
being a riddle, is so clear that he
who runs may read. Pain is to the
ordinary man a warming of danger.
Says the editorial to which we refer:
"Here is a man with a painful
broken arm. Does the pain serve
any special purpose, any purpose
which might not as well have been
served without it9 Most assuredly it
does. But for the pain the average
man-not, perhaps, the scientific
man, but the average man-would
not pay heed to his injury, would
not, in fact, devote the necessary
time and trouble to its perfect re-
pair. We have to consider what the
average man is for the purposes of
this discussion. He is not the average
modern American or modern Euro
pean, tinctured with all the culture,
all the science, all the high moral
ity of the modern world. He is the
typical person of no education who
has made up the generations of men
from the earliest times when man
kind emerged from the practically
brute condition into dawning moral
consciousness. That is the average
man to be considered when we ask
what may be the purpose of pain.
HAS pain had a purpose of any
kind for all those countless genera.
tons of the uncultured past who
have constituted the solid mass Of
mankind2 Most assuredly it has had
a purpose-many purposes. 1t has
compelled attention to injured struc,
lures; it has enforced rest and sleep
by the distress or w~eariness; the
taking of food by the tortures of
hunger, and, in short, has been the
general indicator and corrector for
man and beast in the exercise of
physical and physiological energy
of every kind. Not only SO, but the
moralist and the religious teacher
will unite in insisting that the edu-
cational value of pain in the regions
of morals and religion has been and
continues to be incalculable. So far
from agreeing with DR.. Weir Mitch
ell that pain has no purpose in the
world, we affirm that one of the
most obvious of all the facts con.
nected with pain is its definite AND
incaculable value, as al indicator, 6
corrector, an educational force, alike
in the physical, the mental and the
moral spheres"
This being SO, an objtctor may
say, Why interfere with pain at all
This stand was actually taken by
many who held, at the tine OF the
introduction of a~nesthetics, that tt
use them was to fly in the face o.
the Almighty. But The Hospita
points out that such a course would
be quite illogical. 1t says:
"That which is essential for ont
period of human development may
not be essential for another. Tht
sharp physical stimuli, the club:
and spears of the early savage, arr
not needed by the later O.
men. In earlier times hunger, thirst
fear of wounds from enemies, th,
most elementary of all sensations
were needed to compel even thu
highest races of men to do the bes
that was in them. In our time
there are millions who work in ODE
dience to motives altogether differ
ent from the driving forces of hun
ger, cold and physical fear. Ambi
ton compels exertion, duty, mer
love of work. And SO the element o
painfulness, being less and less need
ed, plays a less and less conspicuou
part as a driving and c%orrectin!
force in the world.
"Will pain, or the possibility O
pain, ever be eliminated from tn
experience of man, or killed, a
DR.. Weir Mitchell might prefer t
put it? Most probably not, SO lonI
as man is endowed with his presen
nervous system. But it is possible
nay, it is quite easy-to imagine
time when mankind in general shal
have reached such a stage of men
tai capacity and culture, such a wild
and masterful victory owe nature
such a degree of physical vigor an
material prosperity, that pain shal
be a very exceptional fact in his eA
perience. This is the goal at whic.
a philosophical medical science mus
at any rate aim with all the energ
of which it is capable. "-Literar,
Digest.
=. Geometry.
The invention of geometry is al
tributed by some to the Assyrian
or Chaldean philosophers, by other
to the Egyptians. Geometry wa
hro11obt into Greaoa hy TbaIac i