14 



Pain depends upon the amount and the quality of the nerve 

 structure that is involved ; a growth not larger than a pea may 

 produce more pain than one vs^eighing a pound, providing that it is 

 in contract with a nerve, and a certain amount of pressure he 

 maintained. 



It would be interesting to follow out the discoveries that medical 

 science has discovered for the relief ot pain, but a mention of these 

 must be sufficient. For producing general anaesthesia we have 

 chloroform, ether, nitrous oxide, &c. ; for local anesthesia we can 

 use either, and for local pain we have the inumerable prep irations 

 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 lacerating 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. 



it 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 



