The Neihart herald. [volume] (Neihart, Mont.) 1890-1901, 1897-04-24
n USES OF PAIN.
They May Be Safely Reduced as Civiliza-
tion Advances.

The statement of DIR. S.. Weir
Mitchell, in his address on "The
Birth and Death of Pain, at the
Boston celebration of the semicen-
tenniai of anesthesia, that the pur-
pose of pain is "a riddle to which
earth ear 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 warning 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 it2 Most ~assuredly it
does. But for the pain the average
man-not, perhaps, the scientific
man, hut 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 OF 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
tions 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 WEAKNESS; the
taking of food by the fortunes 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-
c%ational 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 nc purpose in the
world, we affirm that n of the
most obvious of all the facts CON
nected with pain is it's definite and
incaculable value, as an indicator, a
correctOr, an educational force, alike
in the physical, the mental and the
moral spheres"
This being SO, an objector may
say, Why interfere with pain at all9
This stand was actually taken by
many who held, at the time of the
introduction of anesthetics, that to
ooO lilClu was W hy IL ohO IoSO VI
the Almighty. But The Hospital
points out that such a course would
be quite illogical. 1t says:
"That which is essential for one
period of human development may
not be essential for another. The
sharp physical stimuli, the clubs
and spears of the early savage, are
not needed by the later races of
men. In earlier times hunger, thirst,
fear of wounds from enemies, the
most elementary of all sensations,
were needed to compel even the
highest races of men to do the best
there are millions who work in obe-
dience to motives altogether differ
ent from the driving forces of hun
ger, cold and physical fear. Ambi-
ton compels exertion, duty, mere
love of work. And so the element of
painfulness, being less and less need
ed, plays a less and less conspicuous
part as a driving and correcting
force in the world.
will pain, or the possibility OF
pain, ever be eliminated from the
experience of man, or killed, as
: DIR. Weir Mitchell might prefer tc
put it? Most probably not, so long
as man is endowed with his present
nervous system. But it is possible
nay, it is quite easy-to imagine a
r time when mankind in general shall
have reached such a stage of men
tai capacity and culture, such wide
and masterful victory over nature,
such a degree of physical vigor and
material prosperity, that pain shall
be a very exceptional fact in his ex-
p%erience. This is the goal at which
a philosophical medical science must
at any rate aim with all the energy
of which it is capable. Literary
7 Digest.
Geometry.
The invention of geometry is at
: tributed by some to the Assyrians