Book description
Why is pain so poorly understood? Why do we still distinguish between
mental pain and physical pain, when pain is always an emotional
experience? How can it be that science is about to clone a human being
but still can't cure the pain of a bad back? If pain is the reason why
most people visit the doctor, why are most doctors so bad at addressing
the problem of suffering? Marni Jackson's PAIN: THE FIFTH VITAL SIGN is
a witty, personal and groundbreaking inquiry into the nature, treatment
and definition of human pain, one of the most misunderstood and elusive
subjects to challenge humankind. In the questing and narrative manner of
Oliver Sacks, Jackson takes us back into the history of pain and forward
into the possibilities of pain genetics, Jackson brings us stories both
of people in pain and the pain pioneers: eccentrics and artists,
wrestlers and writers, psychologists and philosophers, nurses and
doctors. Above all, Pain makes an elusive subject vivid and readable. We
all know what pain is. Now Marni Jackson has given it a voice. Why is
pain so poorly understood? Why do we still distinguish between mental
pain and physical pain, when pain is always an emotional experience? How
can it be that science is about to clone a human being but still can't
cure the pain of a bad back? If pain is the reason why most people visit
the doctor, why are most doctors so bad at addressing the problem of
suffering? Marni Jackson's PAIN: THE FIFTH VITAL SIGN is a witty,
personal and groundbreaking inquiry into the nature, treatment and
definition of human pain, one of the most misunderstood and elusive
subjects to challenge humankind. In the questing and narrative manner of
Oliver Sacks, Jackson takes us back into the history of pain and forward
into the possibilities of pain genetics, Jackson brings us stories both
of people in pain and the pain pioneers: eccentrics and artists,
wrestlers and writers, psychologists and philosophers, nurses and
doctors. Above all, Pain makes an elusive subject vivid and readable. We
all know what pain is. Now Marni Jackson has given it a voice.
