Pain

A compulsively readable explorer’s journal of the hidden territory of pain, as profound and insightful as the work of Oliver Sacks and Sherwin Nuland. A bee sting on the lips was the tiny lance that set Marni Jackson off on a four-year exploration of the many ways in which we suffer. Exiled for an afternoon in the country called pain, she realized that no one had the words to describe her condition although it was as familiar as a headache. A fusion of emotion, nerve and memory, pain inspired only questions. “Why do we still distinguish between mental pain and physical pain,” she asks, “when pain is always an emotional experience? Why is pain so poorly understood, especially in a century of self-scrutiny? Hasn’t anyone noticed the embarrassing fact that science is about to clone a human being but still can’t cure the pain of a bad back?” North Americans spend $24 billion a year on pain relief while chronic pain is on the rise. If pain is the reason why most people visit the doctor, why are most doctors so bad at addressing the problem of suffering? Pain: The Fifth Vital Sign dives back into the history of pain and forward into the possibilities of pain genetics, bringing us stories of both people in pain and the pain pioneers: eccentrics and artists, wrestlers and writers, ministers and mothers, psychologists and philosophers, nurses and doctors. Marni Jackson has created a definitive, heartfelt, funny and beguiling portrait of a condition we can’t live with — and can’t live without. Editorial Reviews From Booklist Many patients and physicians have wished for a way to quantify pain as we do the other vital signs--blood pressure, temperature, heart beat, and respiration. Jackson explores the history, variety, acknowledgment, and treatment of pain, the fifth vital sign, accessibly and sympathetically, lending the subject personalism by citing her own experiences of pain, which range from a bee sting to her open mouth to anesthetic failure in the middle of a dental operation. She also mines the medical annals, citing such authorities as S. Weir Mitchell and William Livingston, and various literary works. Her interviews with pain experts make lively reading as she queries the likes of Angela Mailis of the Comprehensive Pain Program in Toronto, and Frank Adams, who was found guilty of "medical incompetence and unprofessional conduct" for humanely treating his patients' pain. Finally, her account of the Ninth World Congress on the Study of Pain, in Vienna, graph

שנה

2003

שפה

English

הוצאה

Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

מהדורות

3

עמודים

366

ISBN

9780747565581

מקור הנתונים: Wikidata