Last updated: Sat, Aug 24, 2024
In 2014 Dr. Keith Wailoo, an historian of science, published "Pain: a political history", Johns Hopkins University Press. The book documents pain as a political issue in the U.S. from the 19th century to the 21st. It is an unusual book in that it views pain as it has appeared in the political process. The vast majority of books about pain are either medical/scientific books about pain or targeted to pain sufferers.
There was a recent period, though, in which pain was in the general news. Starting in the mid-1980s, some prominent pain doctors began to push the idea that pain patients are resistant to treatment. Meanwhile conservative forces were frightened by the expansion of help for those who claimed pain-related disablement. Shortly afterward, an abortive epiphany came to segments of the medical complex, the idea that pain could and should be eliminated. All of this can be traced forward into the policy compromises that define pain treatment and pain compensation today, public pain policy.
The idea that pain is not equivalent to disablement was memorably put into words by Federal Judge Learned Hand in a 1937 decision. He declared from the bench that "a man may have to endure discomfort or pain and not be totally disabled; much of the best work of life goes on under such disabilities."1 (Like today's justices, Hand felt obliged to add his opinion about "the best work of life." I presume he had pain problems himself. I wonder what "the best work of life" would mean in the case of a stevedore or a ditch digger?)
Historian Wailoo was left with the opinion that public pain policy, and particularly policies about pain management, are as much political as scientific. This section reviews the evolution of those policies and reveals the understandings upon which those policies were built.
it is important, therefore, that we see this field [pain managment] not as a medical invention but as a social and political one. Pain management, broadly defined, would henceforth involve negotiating between these competing ideologies of relief and working with the interest groups--physicians, patients, soldiers, police, legislators, and so on--with their own stakes in relief.2
Within this section...
The Cost of War? (Last updated: Wed, Jun 26, 2024)
Sympathy or Scorn? (Last updated: Mon, Nov 4, 2024)
Reagan's War on Disability (Last updated: Sat, Aug 24, 2024)
Debates of the 90s (Last updated: Fri, Aug 16, 2024)
A Pain Control Epidemic? (Last updated: Wed, Jun 26, 2024)
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Envy Up, Scorn Down (This page is incomplete.)