How Science has Lessened Pain.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XI, Issue 1616, 23 January 1886, Page 2

How Science has Lessened Pain.

It is difficult for We rising generation to realise that stateW medicine, and VsKpecially of surgery, which o]s men cati, well remember — when every operation from the extraction of a bad tooth to the removal of a limb, had to be, performed upou patients m full possession of their aeuses. In those days the horror with $rhjcli men and women, uninfluenced by scientific ; enthusiasm, now regard the alleged tortures of vivisection was hardly possible. Thousands ».f human beiugs' had yearly to undergo— every mail, woman, and, child have to undergo '-■—agonies' quite as terrible as any that the most ardent advocates of the rights of animals, the most, vivid imagination^ oxcited by fear tor dearly loved dumb, compauigiis,, ; japcribes to the vivisector's knife- Ic. . may well be. doubted whether the highest brutes are capable of suffering any pain comparable with that of hardy soldiers or seamen— much ' less with that ot sensitive and nervous men and delfoate-wtfmen—^when ; .tlYe; surgeon's blade cuts through living, often inflamed tiesues.jgeaerally fenderefU infinitely more sensitive by* previous disease or injury,- while the ; brain was fully, intensity conscious, every nerve quivering with even exaggerated sensibility. The brutes, at any rate '£ are spared the loug/agony of anticipation, and at least half the tortures of meiibry. They may "feanfor a/ffsw, minutes ;ieur,i fathers and mothers lay m terror for liours and days-^hay, persons of vivid -imagination must have suffered acutely through half a life-time, m the expectation it hat soon, or late, their only choice yhiglit lie between excrutiatiiig temporary torture and a death of lingeriug anguish. No gift of God,, perhaps, has been so precious, no effort of human intellect has done more to lessen human suffering and fear, to take from' life bfuchofijts darkest evil and horror, than: a'usesthesia has developed during the last: fifty years. True, that iv the case of severe operations it ib as yet beyoud the power of medicine to give, com i>let« relief.' ' If spared 'the "torture of the j operation, the patient has yet to endure the cruel smart that the knife leaves bohind. But the relief of previous terror, of the uwful unspeakable, and, to those. Who never felt it, almost inconceivable 4go»y endured while the flesh yraß carved, and the 'bone sawn, hare, dis-appeaFed-4rom-the sick-room and the hospital.'— Mr Percy.Gregg, m National Review. ' >--' ' ; \ ,J'\'