THE BLESSINGS OF PAIN.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIX, Issue 5292, 27 June 1928, Page 2

THE BLESSINGS OF PAIN.

A SIGN AND A WARNING. “Pain has been regarded as an evil to be got rid of if this be possible, and if not, to be borne with fortitude," says the “British Medical Journal.” “In an. age of self-medication this attitude towards pain has become in. tensified, and if we co.uld put the clock back some thirty years a great many people would probably be much less /nconvenienced by the fact that they would find no taxicabs' on the streets than by their inability to buy a. bottle of aspirin, from the chemist Yet it seems clear that, if the matter is* looked; at philosophically and in. its widest aspect, pain is in truth ,a. blessing, and that, as Ricket. sajd, it is a fundamental factor iir human progress. Looking at it within the narrow limits of clinical medicine, pain is presented to us as a s.ig,n and a warning, to be accepted with gratitude rather than endured with curses. Many a weary hour of anguish might be saved if the medical attendant could but assess correctly the meaning of pain ; and 1 how different would be the outlook for many a, patient with cancer if only the very onset of the disease were marked; by the agonising pain of angina insjtead of the phantom twinge that passes as a stitch.”