By Thomas Dormandy. 547 pp., illustrated. New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 2006. $35. ISBN 0-300-11322-6.
The history of our explorations of the nature, meaning, andtreatment of pain opens a window on multiple aspects of humanculture: physiology and pharmacology, obstetrics and bacteriology,psychology and philosophy, art and literature, and politicsand religion. Thomas Dormandy's The Worst of Evils attends toall of these contexts and then some. As he chronicles religiousobjections to the successful use of anesthesia in surgery andobstetrics in the mid-19th century, for example, Dormandy alsoconsiders resistance to "the death of pain" in the broader contextof a culture that included dueling societies, public executions,military floggings, public-school punishments, . . . [Full Text of this Article]
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