The Pain Chronicles : Cures, Myths, Mysteries, Prayers, Diaries, Brain Scans, Healing, and the Science of Suffering

EDITORIAL REVIEW: Each of us will know physical pain in our lives, but none of us knows when it will come or how long it will stay. Today as much as 10 percent of the population of the United States suffers from chronic pain. It is more widespread, misdiagnosed, and undertreated than any major disease. While recent research has shown that pain produces pathological changes to the brain and spinal cord, many doctors and patients still labor under misguided cultural notions and outdated scientific dogmas that prevent proper treatment, to devastating effect. In *The Pain Chronicles*, a singular and deeply humane work, Melanie Thernstrom traces conceptions of pain throughout the ages—from ancient Babylonian pain-banishing spells to modern brain imaging—to reveal the elusive, mysterious nature of pain itself. Interweaving first-person reflections on her own battle with chronic pain, incisive reportage from leading-edge pain clinics and medical research, and insights from a wide range of disciplines—science, history, religion, philosophy, anthropology, literature, and art—Thernstrom shows that when dealing with pain we are neither as advanced as we imagine nor as helpless as we may fear. Both a personal meditation and an intellectual exploration, *The Pain Chronicles *illuminates and makes sense of the all-too-human experience of pain—and confronts with extraordinary grace and empathy its peculiar traits, its harrowing effects, and its various antidotes.

Both a personal meditation and an intellectual exploration, The Pain Chronicles illuminates and makes sense of the all-too-human experience of pain—-and confronts with extraordinary grace and empathy its peculiar traits, its harrowing effects, and its various antidotes.

The New York Times Book Review - Robin Romm

…an expansive, invigorating mix of medical reportage, history, memoir and cultural criticism. Thernstrom's passion and intellectual curiosity are infectious. At times, she is the literary critic, contextualizing our relationship to pain through Susan Sontag, Michel Foucault, Emily Dickinson and the Bible…At other times, she is a fiercely knowledgeable science writer, delivering case studies and research findings with a story teller's verve…The Pain Chronicles is…a sophisticated, elegantly compiled treatise—as wide-ranging, complex and defiant as pain itself.

Arguing that the American medical industry adheres to outdated pain-management practices that fail to bring effective relief to millions of patients, a history of pain management describes some approaches of past cultures while outlining available treatments. The vale of pain, the veil of pain : pain as metaphor The spell of surgical sleep : pain as history Terrible alchemy : pain as disease Finding a voice : pain as narrative To cure the mind : pain as perception.