Inventing Pain Medicine. From the Laboratory to the Clinic

Pain is a pervasive subject in our culture-especially as something to be combatted and conquered. One need only open a magazine or turn on the radio or television to become aware of this fact. But is the widespread interest in pain merely a passing fad or does it reflect the emergence of a new relationship between pain and medicine?
Inventing Pain Medicine explores the current state of pain medicine against the background of its historical development. Based on extensive field research, Isabelle Baszanger´s study outlines the first tentative steps to control pain taken in the last years of World War II when a young American anesthesiologist, John J. Bonica, made alleviating the pain of wounded soldiers his mission. Baszanger traces Bonica´s protracted pioneering struggle for recognition of pain as worthy of medical attention in itself, for a definition of pain as more than a diagnostic tool, including differentiation of types of pain and modes of treatment, and for the establishment of specialized multidisciplinary pain clinics.