The Pain Chronicles (37 page)

“The Lord gave”
: See Genesis 1:21 (King James Version).

“Where were you?”
: See Job 38:4 (King James Version).

“was silent as one who experiences no pain”
:
The Gospel of St. Peter: Synoptical Tables, with Translation and Critical Apparatus
, trans. John Macpherson (T. & T. Clark, 1893), Book 3, Verse 11.

human palm is not substantial enough
: See Frank T. Vertosick, Jr.,
Why We Hurt: The Natural History of Pain
(Orlando: Harvest Books, 2001), 156.

extant skeleton of a man crucified in that period
: See Gary R. Habermas,
The Historical Jesus
(Joplin, Mo.: College Press, 1996), 174.

damage the median nerves that supply the hands
: See discussion in Vertosick,
Why We Hurt
, 159.

“to suffer little things now”
: See Thomas à Kempis,
The Imitation of Christ
(Milwaukee: Dover, 2003), 24.

“Allow me to be eaten by the beasts”
: William A. Jurgens,
Faith of the Early Fathers
(Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1970), 22.

Cosmas and Damian
: See Sabine Baring-Gold,
Lives of the Saints
(London: Hodges, 1882), 397–401.

“when he was black in the mouth”
: See John Foxe,
Foxe’s Book of Martyrs
(Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1978), 212–15.

“When the blazing fire does not burn”
:
The Law Code of Manu
, Patrick Olivelle, trans. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 119.

King Athelstan
: See Hunt Janin,
Medieval Justice
(Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2004), 14–15 and also Katherine Fischer Drew,
Magna Carta
(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2004), 163.

Babylonian river ordeal
: See Gwendolyn Leick,
The Babylonians
(New York: Routledge, 2003), 163.

ordeals finally gave way to trial by jury
: Robert Von Moschzisker,
Trial by Jury
(Philadelphia: Geo T. Bisel, 1922), 40. See also Daniel Friedmann,
To Kill and Take Possession: Law, Morality and Society in Biblical Stories
(Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2002), 21.

“The witch is executed”
: See Ariel Glucklich,
Sacred Pain
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 41.

“‘What are you doing at the moment?’”
: Daudet,
In the Land of Pain
, 1.

“Pain strengthens the religious person’s bond”
: See Glucklich,
Sacred Pain
, 6.

“deciphers it with his wounds”
: See Franz Kafka,
The Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony, and Other Stories
, Joachim Neugroschel, trans. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 205 ff.

“When pain transgresses the limits”
: Cited in Glucklich,
Sacred Pain
, 23.

“the sweetness of this greatest pain”
: Ibid., 206.

“one’s own physical pain” and “another person’s physical pain”
: Scarry,
The Body in Pain
, 3 and 4.

II. THE SPELL OF SURGICAL SLEEP: PAIN AS HISTORY

“WE HAVE CONQUERED PAIN”
: See John Saunders,
The People’s Journal
3 (London: People’s Journal Office, 1847): 25.

“nothing so horrible as toothache”
: Heinrich Heine,
Works
, Volume 4, trans. Charles Godfrey Leland (New York: Dutton, 1906), 141.

pain required interpretation
: This is clear in many of the well-known texts of these religious traditions. For example, in Saint Augustine’s
Confessions
, written in the fourth century C.E., he speaks of pain as sometimes physical and sometimes spiritual, but his metaphors often blend them. Speaking of his
spiritual
pain, he writes of his relationship to God as a
physical
cure: “Under the secret touch of your healing hand my swelling pride subsided, and day by day the pain I suffered brought me health, like an ointment which stung but cleared the confusion and darkness from the eye of my mind.” See
Confessions
(New York: Penguin, 1961), 144.

Brutality began to recede
: The beginning of the nineteenth century saw many such reforms. Britain ended its slave trade in 1807 and in the following decades, a series of legislative acts began to restrict child labor.

Christianity itself was influenced
: For a more extensive discussion, see Lucy Bending’s
The Representation of Bodily Pain in Late Nineteenth-Century English Culture
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).

they die painlessly
: In
Jane Eyre
, Helen Burns, dying of consumption, tells Jane, “We must all die one day, and the illness which is removing me is not painful; it is gentle and gradual: my mind is at rest.” Jane sleeps through the moment of her death, so it is not described. In Dickens’s
Old Curiosity Shop
, he forgoes describing Little Nell’s passing and gently lingers instead on her corpse: “No sleep so beautiful and calm, so free from trace of pain, so fair to look upon. She seemed a creature fresh from the hand of God, and waiting for the breath of life; not one who had lived and suffered death.”

“robbed of its terrors”
: René Fülöp-Miller,
Triumph Over Pain
(New York: Literary Guild of America, 1938), 150.

How terrible surgery had been
: See discussion in Peter Stanley,
For Fear of Pain: British Surgery 1790–1840
(Amsterdam: Rodopi B.V., 2003), 317.

“an armed savage who attempts to get that by force”
: John Hunter, “Lectures on the Principles of Surgery” in
The Works of John Hunter
(London: Longman, 1835), 210.

body’s integrity was so well guarded by pain
: See the discussion of development of surgery in Dormandy’s
The Worst of Evils
and in Stanley’s
For Fear of Pain.

“moving, bleeding flesh”
: Quoted in Stanley,
For Fear of Pain
, 190.

“amputate a shoulder in the time”
: Quoted in S. A. Hoffman,
Under the Ether Dome
(New York: Charles Scribner and Sons, 1986), 266.

“spoil a hatful of eyes”
: Robert Brudenell Carter, “Lectures on Operative Ophthalmic Surgery,”
The Lancet
(April 13, 1872): 495.

mortality owing to amputation at the thigh
: James Young Simpson,
Anesthesia, Hospitalism, Hemaphroditism, and a Proposal to Stamp Out Small-Pox and Other Contagious Diseases
(Boston: Adam and Charles Black, 1871), 95.

“How often have I dreaded”
: Valentine Mott,
Pain and Anaesthetics: An Essay
(Government Printing Office, 1862), 11.

surgeons were typically of the lower class
: See Francis Michael Longstreth Thompson,
The Cambridge Social History of Britain 1750–1950: Social Agencies and Institutions
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 176–77.

helped dissuade Charles Darwin
: Charles Darwin,
Autobiographies
(London: Penguin, 2002), 21.

“resolute and merciless”
: Quoted in Ian Dawson,
Renaissance Medicine
(Brooklyn: Enchanted Lion Books, 2005), 43.

“indications of the patient’s state of mind”
: Cited in Dormandy,
The Worst of Evils
, 108.

gangrene
: See Frank M. Freemon,
Gangrene and Glory
(Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1998), 46–49, for a detailed account of the treatment of wounds during the Civil War.

“during the operation”
: Jonathan Warren quoted in Glucklich,
Sacred Pain
, 181.

“Oh no, for mammy has told me that I ought”
: John Abernethy,
The Hunterian Oration
(London: Longman Hurst, 1819), 62, as cited in Stanley,
For Fear of Pain
, 254.

patient of Dr. Robert Keate’s
: See Stanley,
For Fear of Pain
, 265.

amputation of his foot in 1842
: Wilson describes his experience in a letter to anesthesia pioneer James Simpson, printed in
The Obstetric Memoirs and Contributions of James Y. Simpson
, ed. by W. O. Priestley and H. R. Storer (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1856), 712.

1812 letter by the English novelist and memoirist Fanny Burney
: See Fanny Burney,
Journals and Letters
(New York: Penguin, 2001), 431–44. Although the letter is addressed to her sister, Fanny had both her husband and teenage son copy her draft over to make a clean version, so it seems to have been written partly to share her experience with them—knowledge she had kept from them at the time of the operation.

doctors most likely did not actually
examine
her breast
: See Claire Harman,
Fanny Burney: A Biography
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001), 290.

“no half-measures will answer”
: Quoted in Dormandy,
The Worst of Evils
, 172.

punching him on the chin
: As Dr. Larrey tells it, upon coming to consciousness, the colonel sputtered that the doctor had not behaved as a gentleman, but had taken “cowardly advantage” of his temporary incapacity. Dr. Larrey explained that he knew “the insult would temporarily distract,” showed the colonel the bullet he had removed from his foot, and asked him to shake hands. See Dormandy,
The Worst of Evils
, 1.

“refrigeration anesthesia”
: Also known as “cryoanalgesia.” Garotting—another technique of the day—involved cutting off the head’s blood supply by compressing the carotid artery until the patient fainted. Practiced aggressively, it could cause brain damage; practiced cautiously, it risked too short a spell of unconsciousness for a complete surgery.

“cut and [he] will feel nothing”
: Arnold of Villanova, quoted in William John Bishop,
The Early History of Surgery
(New York: Barnes and Noble, 1995), 60. See also Henry Smith Williams and Edward Huntington Williams,
A History of Science: The Beginnings
(New York: Harper and Brothers, 1904), 35.

Henbane and mandrake were too dangerous
: “Whoso useth more than four leaves shall be in danger to sleepe without waking,” a medieval text cautioned of henbane. See Sidney Beisly,
Shakespeare’s Garden, or the Plants and Flowers Named in His Works Described
(London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts & Green, 1864), 87.

Opium is the oldest and most important medicinal substance
: See Booth,
Opium: A History
, 15.

“Many a penny”
: Elizabeth Gaskell,
Mary Barton
(New York: Penguin, 1996), 58.

Greek word for
shapes: See discussion in Dormandy,
The Worst of Evils
, 255.