The Story of Pain

From Prayer to Painkillers

Joanna Bourke

The story of pain and suffering since the eighteenth century
Addresses the big questions about the experience and nature of suffering - and how to respond to it
Charts how our understanding of pain has changed completely over the last three centuries - from positive function to ultimate evil
A fascinating investigation for the 21st century reader into how we have coped with suffering in the past - both our own suffering and that of the ones we love

The Story of Pain

From Prayer to Painkillers

Joanna Bourke

Description

Everyone knows what is feels like to be in pain. Scraped knees, toothaches, migraines, giving birth, cancer, heart attacks, and heartaches: pain permeates our entire lives. We also witness other people - loved ones - suffering, and we 'feel with' them.

It is easy to assume this is the end of the story: 'pain-is-pain-is-pain', and that is all there is to say. But it is not. In fact, the way in which people respond to what they describe as 'painful' has changed considerably over time. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, for example, people believed that pain served a specific (and positive) function - it was a message from God or Nature; it would perfect the spirit. 'Suffer in this life and you wouldn't suffer in the next one'. Submission to pain was required. Nothing could be more removed from twentieth and twenty-first century understandings, where pain is regarded as an unremitting evil to be 'fought'.

Focusing on the English-speaking world, this book tells the story of pain since the eighteenth century, addressing fundamental questions about the experience and nature of suffering over the last three centuries. How have those in pain interpreted their suffering - and how have these interpretations changed over time? How have people learnt to conduct themselves when suffering? How do friends and family react? And what about medical professionals: should they immerse themselves in the suffering person or is the best response a kind of professional detachment?

As Joanna Bourke shows in this fascinating investigation, people have come up with many different answers to these questions over time. And a history of pain can tell us a great deal about how we might respond to our own suffering in the present - and, just as importantly, to the suffering of those around us.

The Story of Pain

From Prayer to Painkillers

Joanna Bourke

The Story of Pain

From Prayer to Painkillers

Joanna Bourke

Author Information

Joanna Bourke is Professor of History at Birkbeck College at University of London. She is the prize-winning author of nine books, including histories of modern warfare, military medicine, psychology and psychiatry, the emotions, and rape. Among others, she is the author of Dismembering the Male: Men's Bodies, Britain, and the Great War (1996), An Intimate History of Killing (1999), Fear: A Cultural History (2005) and Rape: A History from 1860 to the Present (2007), What it Means to be Human: Reflections from 1791 to the Present (2011), and Wounding the World: How Military Violence and War-Play Invade our Lives (2014). An Intimate History of Killing won the Wolfson Prize and the Fraenkel Prize, and "Eyewitness," her audio history of Britain, won a number of prizes, including the Gold for the Most Original Audio. She is also a frequent contributor to TV and radio shows, and a regular newspaper correspondent.

The Story of Pain

From Prayer to Painkillers

Joanna Bourke

From Our Blog

Eight facts on the history of pain management

September is Pain Awareness Month. In order to raise awareness of the issues surrounding pain and pain management in the world today, we've taken a look back at pain throughout history and compiled a list of the eight most interesting things we learned about pain from The Story of Pain: From Prayer to Painkillers by Joanna Bourke.

Posted on September 13, 2014

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The story of pain in pictures

Pain is a universal experience. Throughout time, everyone knows what it feels like to be in pain -- whether it's a scraped knee, toothache, migraine, or heart attack. Although the feeling of pain may remain the same, the ways in which it was described, treated, and interpreted in the 18th and 19th centuries varies greatly from the ways we regard pain today. The below slideshow of images from The Story of Pain by Joanna Burke will take you on a journey of pain throughout history.

Posted on September 4, 2014

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Does pain have a history?

It's easy to assume that we know what pain is. We've all experienced pain, from scraped knees and toothaches to migraines and heart attacks. When people suffer around us, or we witness a loved one in pain, we can also begin to 'feel' with them. But is this the end of the story?

Posted on July 28, 2014

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