Principles & Practice of Pain Medicine, 2e >Anastasia Kucharski and Edwin M. Todd

Pain: Historical Perspectives: Introduction

"For more than 50,000 years, pain has been part of the human experience. Pain has had different meanings for different people. Likewise theories about the causes and mechanisms of pain reflect the state of knowledge of the societies devising the theories. In all ages pain has been a very real and immediate concern, but always the attitudes and responses of people have been shaped by magical, demonological, theological, philosophical, and practical influences in varying degrees and with shifting emphasis. It is our purpose to capture and examine some of these changing interpretations of pain through time...."