Last updated: Sat, Aug 24, 2024
Folk and cultural understandings of pain exist because pain is an important fact of life. Pain itself has been a subject of interest in popular culture mostly since the blossoming of scientific and medical treatments of pain. Prior to the late 19th century, ideas about pain mostly fell under the category of "illness." Thus, the Christian Gospels tell stories of the Son of God who was able to cure illness by a touch to the hem of his robe, or to drive out the demons that caused what we now call mental illnesses.
Concepts about illness and suffering (historically) and about pain (beginning in the late 19th century) reflect a basket of human concerns. Among these are compassion and sympathy and the knowledge that we all are subject to illness and suffering. There have always been theories about what causes illness and suffering and how they relate to the overall image of mankind in the universe.
Besides those concerns, modern societies have concerns about the costs associated with pain, which are substantial. People have always been concerned about the just treatment of pain sufferers. Those concerns include fair treatment for the deserving ill and (different) fair treatment for the undeserving. Thus, it is socially important to distinguish the deserving from the undeserving. Our sense of who is deserving and who is undeserving are precisely about social status. Less explicit attention has been paid to the social status of sufferers.
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Economic Stakes in Pain (Last updated: Sat, Aug 24, 2024)
Social Stakes in Pain (Last updated: Sat, Aug 24, 2024)
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Understandings of Chronic Pain in the Culture (Last updated: Fri, Sep 13, 2024)