Pain : a very short introduction Cover Image

Pain : a very short introduction / Rob Boddice.

Summary:

In this 'Very Short Introduction', Rob Boddice explores the history, culture, and medical science of pain. Charting the shifting meanings of pain across time and place, he focusses on how the experience and treatment of pain have changed. He describes historical hierarchies of pain experience that related pain to social class and race, and the privileging of human states of pain over that of other animals. From the pain concepts of classical antiquity to expressions of pain in contemporary art, and modern medical approaches to the understanding, treatment, and management of pain, Boddice weaves a multifaceted account of this central human experience. Ranging from neuroscientific innovations in experimental medicine to the constructionist arguments of social scientists, pain is shown to resist a timeless definition. Pain is physical and emotional, of body and mind, and is always experienced subjectively and contextually.

Record details

ISBN: 9780198738565
ISBN: 0198738560
Physical Description: xviii, 133 pages : illustrations ; 18 cm.
Edition: First edition
Publisher: Oxford, United Kingdom : Oxford University Press, 2017.
Copyright: ©2017

Content descriptions

Formatted Contents Note:

1.Pain concepts -- 2.Pain and piety -- 3.Pain and the machine -- 4.Pain and civilization -- 5.Sympathy, compassion, empathy -- 6.Pain as pleasure -- 7.Pain in modern medicine and science -- 8.Chronic pain -- 9.Cultures of pain