14 
Pain depends upon the amount and the quality of the nerve 
structure that is mvolved; a growth not larger than a pea may 
produce more pain than one weighing a pound, providing that it is 
in contract with a nerve, and a certain amount of pressure be 
maintained. 
It would be interesting to follow out the discoveries that medical 
science has discovered for the relief of pain, but a mention of these 
must be sufficient. For producing general anesthesia we have 
chloroform, ether, nitrous oxide, &c.; for local anesthesia we can 
use either, and for local pain we have the inumerable preparations 
of opium, &c., &c, It is often said that we do not value a thing 
until we lose it. Well, try and imagine what took place before 
the introduction of chloroform into general use? Many people died 
at that time simply for the want of an operation, fearing the agony 
of undergoing it. Dryden deliberately chose death rather than 
endure the pains of a surgical operation. Even those who had the 
courage to put themselves under the knife suffered an amount of 
pain which seems in many cases almost to have been the cause of 
death. ‘ Pain may kill,” says Dr. Latham, “ it may overwhelm 
the nervous system by its mere magnitude and duration.” 
Although civilization has brought in its train seemingly more pain, 
yet science has not been backward in finding out many inventions 
and so robbing pain of half of its terror. 
As many people wish the banishment of pain, does it occur to 
them what condition we should be placed in, if it were so? We 
have no hesitation in saying that but for pain neither we nor most 
of the lower animals could exist. What is it that forces us to care 
for the body but the fear of pain? If there were only pleasure and 
not pain we should destroy ourselves. Think what the result would 
be, providing that there was no pain. We drop something valuable 
into the fire ; if there was no fear of the pain should we not pluck 
it out and at the same time destroy our fingers? We are going on 
an excursion; why trouble ourselves with a weight of food if there 
were no such thing as hunger? We wonder how much a miser 
in the year would spend on food or clothing if it were not that 
something would accrue even more painful than spending money. 
The same reasoning applies to the brute world. [If lions or tigers 
had no pain from the laceratiug of their skin as they passed through 
the interwoven jungle they would pass on until they had no skin 
to lacerate. If any one animal had no pain when the teeth of 
another tore its muscles and crunched its bones, it might crunch 
away and no effect be made to prevent it. 
)t must be noted that it is education and experience, and not — 
‘instinct. which informs us of the use of pain. For instance, an 
untrained child will not hesitate for a moment to walk over a high 
