11 
parts of the brain which govern sensation be destroyed, or if by the 
administration of an anesthetic, such as chloroform, the functions 
of the brain be suspended, pain ceases to be felt. When a finger 
is cut, the pain is not really felt at the injured part, but is perceived 
as such in the brain, for a communication is sent from the irritated 
cut nerve, up through the nerves of the arm to the spinal cord, 
thence to the sensory part of the brain; here the sensation of pain 
is perceived, but is referred to the finger. If the irritation of the 
divided nerve be kept up by the retention of any foreign body, such 
as dirt, the pain will be continuous. Many of you know by ex- 
perience that as long as a fly or a grain of dust remains under the 
eyelid, the pain does not cease. But there is another kind of pain, 
not physical, but moral or mental pain, often harder to bear than 
the former; these two kinds of pain, although often overlapping 
. each other in their origin and progress, yet must more or less be con- 
sidered apart; and as I have already stated, it is the physical side 
of pain which will mainly occupy us this evening. 
In considering the severity of pain, the individual must be taken 
into account ; physical pain has much to do with physical sensi- 
bility ; where the latter is not highly developed, and the intellectual 
capacity low down in the mental scale, pain is as a rule much less 
felt. Ihave seen labourers put up with an amount of suffering 
which to a highly educated and refined person would be unbearable, 
and where mental suffering is concerned, the difference is often 
more marked ; and so, although education and pleasant surround- 
ings may bring many pleasures, they nevertheless increase the 
capacities for suffering. 
A writer in the Pall Mall Gazette on Malingering, stated some 
years ago ‘“ that he had known one (a malingerer) stumble under a 
cart wheel, and thus secure a broken leg -the more welcome since 
the fracture was compound, and promised to keep him many 
months under the surgeon’s hands.’”’ He goes on to say, ‘‘ I have 
known others thrust their hands and feet into machinery, and at 
times even to lay open a muscle, or lop off a finger or toe. Not long 
ago I saw a farm labourer of middle age, whom four months of a 
hospital had enamoured of that kind of life, and who had just 
cut off a finger with a hedging bill a few days after his restoration 
to liberty and work, doing this in order that he might return to the 
hospital. When the mind is much engaged, or in a state of excite- 
ment, injuries may be almost if not quite painless ; many men have 
gone through a battle and have only discovered their wounds at 
the end. When we cut ourselves, although it may be deeply, the 
' pain is rarely a noticeable feature, because of the quickness of the 
_ process and the unpreparedness of the mind. I once attended a 
_boy who fell from the top of a house in Longford Terrace into the 
