THE IMPORTANCE OF MENTAL PAIN 355 



THE KELATIVE IMPORTANCE OF MENTAL PAIN 



By SMITH BAKER, M.D. 



UTICA, N. X. 



IT is everywhere thought beneficent and just to recognize the de- 

 mands of physical pain, and to furnish prompt and effective 

 means for its relief. Let there be but the least significant crick or 

 •colic, the dullest ache, the most transitory throb, and it is almost 

 universally considered uncivilized not to try to give the sufferer relief 

 from such an intrusion upon his sense of comfort and safety. 



When, however, we look at the other aspect of human suffering, 

 the one that is much more closely intimate, and yet much less evident 

 to observers — the psychical, the mind-and-heart side of mortal suffering 

 — we come upon the interesting if not startling discovery that there 

 has been, and still is, comparatively speaking, by far ]ess attention 

 given to the truly exceptional needs of this kind of suffering than to 

 those of physical derivation, even though so frequently these latter 

 are of the lower order and of the lesser significance. 



Of course, it should not be inferred that the significance of mental 

 pain has never been recognized, nor that useful attempts at ameliora- 

 tion have never been made. Quite a proportion of the work of the 

 sympathetic and other helping classes has ordinarily been and is now 

 in some way to comfort and encourage and otherwise mitigate and 

 •even cure, the mental distress of their fellows. Moreover, it can be 

 joyfully conceded that the sick-room has always and everywhere been 

 the scene of useful effort on the part of the more strictly professional 

 classes, through sympathy and persuasion and cheering-up and every 

 •other sort of constructive and kindly attention, to relieve the sufferer 

 from everything which might add mental distress to his physical 

 .ailment. All this has been worthy, most useful, even though as yet 

 it may be counted, chiefly as but a sort of foundation experience upon 

 which real systems of relief shall be built, those which shall certainly 

 be far more truly and widely successful than hap-hazard methods have 

 hitherto proved. 



But granting all this to be true and as praiseworthy as useful, it 

 still should not appear to be far-fetched or intrusive once more to 

 invoke still further consideration of the relative importance of mental 

 pain, or confidently to express the hope that in the very near future 

 the extent and depths of this shall come to be by far more adequately 

 recognized and appreciated; and that the art of preventing and ame- 

 liorating this shall be considered as much a matter of simple duty, 



