Pain - a compassionate science (Continued)

The rules governing the development and marketing of drugs demand that prospective medications are tested against placebos. Professor Wall does not dispute the need for such tests but highlights the degree of misunderstanding that surround the "placebo effect". The 'all in your head' brigade of ill-informed medical practitioners assumes that the body is a complicated chemistry set, which will respond to an appropriate dose of the 'right' substance; so, when an innocent sugar-coated pill produces relief in their patients, they sneer. They fail to recognise the significant role that placebo plays in most effective treatments. Demonstrating a placebo response does not prove anything about the genuineness of a patient's pain.

Professor Wall does not spare the ignorant or arrogant among his medical colleagues, but is fulsome in his praise of recent advances in anaesthesia and pain management. After generations of the "stop making all that fuss" method of pain management, anaesthetists, as a body are making their influence felt in this field. Treatments of all kinds are hampered unless the patient co-operates, and few patients willingly co-operate with procedures that hurt. Pain control in the operating theatre has led to pain management in the wider field of medical services and increasing numbers of hospitals now run pain clinics. The ideal pain clinic provides an adequate staff supervised by enough qualified anaesthetists to meet the requirements of sufferers. Less ideal clinics are still a step forward in a movement that has a long way to go, but has made a promising start. We may hope that the publication of this popularising handbook will inspire more medical students to enter the field and increase the depth and availability of pain management services.

This book examines acute and chronic pain, pain with obvious causes and pain that is less easily explained. It looks at the ways we experience pain and the ways we react to pain in others. It examines the expectations of various cultures and the prejudices we sometimes encounter from healthcare professionals. It also reviews a range of conventional and 'alternative' therapies. This comes from a man who has given his life to understanding patients as well as therapies. The undeserved personal experience of his own cancer, and its treatment, lends extra authority to his analysis. Professor Wall is capable of writing long-winded scientific manuals filled with complex medical jargon - and a search through medical libraries will find his name attached to many such tomes. However, in "Pain - the Science of Suffering", he has produced an affordable paperback that most readers will find accessible - and helpful.

© Derrick Phillips - 2000