The word palliate comes from the Latin palliare, “to cloak”—and providing pain relief was perceived as cloaking the essence of the illness, smothering symptoms rather than attacking disease. Writing about pain relief, a Boston surgeon thus reasoned in the 1950s: “If there is persistent pain576 which cannot be relieved by direct surgical attack on the pathological lesion itself . . . , relief can be obtained only by surgical interruption of sensory pathways.” The only alternative to surgery was more surgery—fire to fight fire. Pain-relieving opiate drugs such as morphine or fentanyl were
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