The Scranton tribune. [volume] (Scranton, Pa.) 1891-1910, 1897-01-28
THE UTILITY OF PAIN.
The Best of Reasons Why Pain Should
Accompany Illness and Injury.
From the Literary Digest

The statement of DR.. S. Weir Mitchell,
of Pain" at the recent Boston cele5ra-
ton of the semi-ceptennial of anaetha-
sia, that the purpose of pain is - rid
die to which earth can give no answer"
is called in question by the editor Of the
Hospital in a leading article CDec. 3d.
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 it.
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 repair.
We have to consider what the average
man is for the purposes of this discus
sion. He is not the average modern
American, or modern European, tine
tured with all the culture, all the SET
enCe, all the high morality of the mod
ern world. He is the typical person of
no education who has made up the gen
erations of men from the earliest times
when mankind emerged from the prac-
tically brute condition into dawnnG
moral consciousness. That is the aver
age man to be considered when we ask
what may be the purpose of pain. His
pain had purpose of any kind for all
those countless generations of the un-
cultured past who have constituted the
solid mass of mankind? Most assured
ly it has had q purpose-many purposes.
1t has compelled attention to injured
structures; it has enforced rest and
sleep by the distress of Wearness; the
taking of food by the tortures of hun
ger; 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 rclig-
ious teacher will unite in insisting that
the educational value of pain in the re-
gions 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
wbrld, we affirm that one of the most
| obvious of all the facts connected with
pain is it's definite and incalculable
value, as an Indicator, corrector, educa-
| tional force, alike in physical, mental
| and moral spheres"
This being so, an objector may say,
why interfere with pain at all. This
stand was actually taken by many who
| held, at the time of the introduction of
anaesthetics, that to use them was to
| fly in the face of the Almighty. But the
| Hospital points out that such a course
| "a
THAT which is essential for one per-
iod of human development may not be
essential for another. The sharp ply
steal stimuli, the clubs and spears of
| the early savage, are not needed by the
| late races of men. In earlier times
hunger, thirst, fear of wounds from enc
mics, the most elementary of all sensa-
| tiOns, We're needed to compel even the
| highest races of men to do the best that
| was in them. In our times there are
| millions who work in obedience to mo-
| tiVes altogether different from the driV-
| ing forces of hunger, cold, and physical
| fear. Ambition 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. VIII pain, or the posi-,
bility of pain, ever be eliminated from
| the experience of man, or killed as DR.
| Weir Michel might prefer to put it,
Most probably not, so long as man Is
| endowed with his present nervous sys,
tenn. But 1t is possible, nay, it is quite
easy, to imagine time when mankind
in general shall have reached such {
stage of mental capacity and culture
such wide and masterful victory oVel
nature, such a degree of physical yigol
and material prosperity, that pain shal
be very exceptional fact in his eXper
ience, This is the goal at which phil
osophical medical science must at an!
rate aim, with all the energy of whiCl
it is capable"