The Worst of Evils: The Fight Against Pain

by Thomas Dormandy

This riveting book takes the reader around the globe and through the centuries to discover how different cultures have sought to combat and treat physical pain. With colorful stories and sometimes frightening anecdotes, Dr. Thomas Dormandy describes a checkered progression of breakthroughs, haphazard experiments, ignorant attitudes, and surprising developments in human efforts to control pain. Attitudes toward pain and its perception have changed, as have the means of pain relief and scientific understanding. Dr. Dormandy offers a thoroughly fascinating, multi-cultural history that culminates with a discussion of today’s successes―and failures―in the struggle against pain. 

The book’s exploration is fused with accounts of the development of specific methods of pain relief, including the use of alcohol, plants, hypnosis, religious faith, stoic attitudes, local anesthesia, general anesthesia, and modern analgesics. Dr. Dormandy also looks at the most recent advances in pain clinics and palliative care for patients with terminal disease as well as the prospects for loosening pain’s grip in the future.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Audiobook, Philosophy, Science

576 pages, Paperback

First published May 30, 2006

About the author

Thomas Dormandy was a retired consultant chemical pathologist and professor who worked at the University of Brunel and Whittington Hospital at the University of London. Dormandy wrote several books in addition to over three hundred scientific articles. In 1999 Dormandy published The White Death: A History of Tuberculosis. In it he combined scientific and sociological history to create his account of tuberculosis and various people's struggle with the disease primarily in the United States and Europe.

Reviews of The White Death were mixed among the critics. Muiris Houston, writing in the British Medical Journal, commented that Dormandy "has a knack of explaining technical matters" as he "weaves literature, social history, pharmacology, and epidemiology into an entertaining tale." In a Lancet review, Anne Hardy agreed that the book was "clearly written," but felt it "offers little to stimulate the interest of those already familiar with … the history of tuberculosis in general." Writing in the English Historical Review, Helen Jones thought the outline of the book was unclear. "There is no explanation at the outset of how the chapters are organized, and no sense of what will follow from chapter to chapter," Jones commented. A critic concluded in a Publishers Weekly review, however, that the "prodigious research and an anecdotal style blend to make this a fascinating foray into the history of medicine."

Reviews

[Raquel]

I know that this is not the best option to read while preparing for breast surgery, but here I am. It made me feel less afraid of pain and anaesthesia, compared to what I would have faced if I had been born a couple of centuries ago.

[Teo]

2016.01.21–2016.02.16

Contents

Dormandy T (2006) (20:41) Worst of Evils, The - The Fight Against Pain

List of illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction

Part I: The Mists of History

01. A gift of the gods
02. The grape and the poppy
03. Roots, barks, fruit, and leaves
04. Pain denied
05. Pain ignored
06. The heresies
07. Healing and holiness
08. Islam
09. The age of the cathedrals
10. Pain exalted

Part II: Scientific Stirrings

11. Rebirth, rediscovery, and reform
12. Going to war
13. Foundations
14. Heavenly dreams
15. Animal magnetism
16. Pneumatic medicine
17. Laughing gas
18. The terror of the knife
19. Hospital disease

Part III: Painless Surgery

20. To the threshold
21. A gentleman from the South
22. "This Yankee dodge"
23. In Gower Street
24. And beyond
25. Chloroform
26. The shape of dreams
27. Mr. Anaesthetist
28. Conflicting views
29. The rights of pain
30. Who needs an anaesthetic?

Part IV: The Beginning of the Modern

31. The new physiology
32. The new pathology
33. The acute abdomen
34. Old drugs, new drugs
35. The bark of the willow
36. Cocaine
37. High Victorian pain
38. The power of pain control

Part V: Yesteryears

39. Seminal years
40. The gift of St. Barbara
41. Tic douloureux
42. Twilight sleep
43. Dolorism
44. Renoir
45. Pills and poisons
46. The surgery of pain
47. The schism
48. Pain mechanisms
49. Pain clinics
50. Hospice

Epilogue
Bibliography
Index

[Anton]

Some historians have, somehow, convinced themselves that shying away from ideas is a sort of modesty. Through the abuse of the anecdote they drag even the most interesting and complex topic to the level of chatter and gossip, to the point that one might imagine being in the presence of a spinster.

[Hope]

Probably not the best choice of books to read while suffering from an herniated disc and subsequent back surgery....but an interesting account of the history of pain management.

[Will G]

Meh. Didn't really do the subject justice. Also the Christian references were getting a little tiresome.

[Daniel Erlij]

El nombre de Thomas Dormandy está íntimamente ligado a divulgación de la historia de la medicina, en especial por su obra magna “The White death: A history of Tuberculosis”. En esta ocasión, el autor se sumerge en la historia del dolor y la eterna lucha de la medicina por controlarlo. Su obra transcurre entre eventos históricos novelados que
profundizan en la valoración del dolor en la antigüedad y el desarrollo de las terapias analgésicas y anestésicas que sustentan la base de la medicina moderna. Resulta sumamente interesante y entretenido aceptar el viaje propuesto por Dormandy para conocer la historia
del gas hilarante, el cloroformo, “el truco yanqui”, la corteza de sauce (de donde se obtiene el ácido acetilsalicílico o aspirina), la cocaína, utilizada inicialmente como fármaco para el dolor (teniendo a Freud como uno de sus mayores defensores), para llegar al desarrollo de las unidades de dolor en la actualidad. Ahora, si el destino es atractivo, hay que estar dispuesto a asumir las horas de viaje, pues de no ser así, las más de 700 páginas del libro, podrían hacer que más de uno se bajara del tren.

[Jeff Russo]

a book about pain that also en passant gives some history on topics like surgery, etc... a good read and had fewer dragging parts than you might expect from a 500 page treatment

[Emily]

I read this hulking tomb cover-to-cover and thoroughly enjoyed it. I picked it up on sale table and was unsure of it. It sat around my shelves for quite some time, but after reading "Ether Day" I decided it might be just the thing. Thomas Dormandy looks at the history of pain and how it's been treated from Antiquity through to mid-20th Century. Dormandy's style is clear and readable, despite covering over two thousand years of medical history. More importantly, through 500 pages, Dormandy is able to keep the narrative both moving and interesting. A reader would not have to commit to the entire book. It is written cleanly enough that sections or chapters of interest could be read without anything being lost.

[Chris Loves to Read]

Discusses how different cultures have sought to combat and treat physical pain and how the attitudes towards pain and its perception have changed.

[Maged Zeineldin]

Very nice, may be intense history of pain and anesthesia.

[Susan]

excellent historical information, interesting, sometimes long!

[Ajay Bohr]

Fascinating and gripping. Really enjoyed it and learnt a lot.

[Carlos AndyCo]

Una historia general sobre el fenómeno del dolor, da una perspectiva sobre cómo ha evolucionado su tratamiento, las causas y las consecuencias sociológicas, políticas, médicas o filosóficas.