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| Lelouch Lamperouge... |
 Posted: Wed Oct 28, 2009 5:59 am |
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[...]
Pain: Its Cause and Cure
By W. H. Bates, M.D.
Pain is supposed to be a beneficent provision on the part of Nature
for advising us of injurious processes going on in the body, but, like
many of Nature's arrangements, it is a very clumsy one. Many of our
most serious diseases are quite painless in their early stage (the
only time when the warning of pain would be of any use), while a
physiological process like childbirth is accompanied by such severe
pain that the pangs of the woman in travail have become proverbial.
Pain also occurs with no local cause whatever, being purely a creation
of the mind, and it has, besides a very destructive effect upon the
body, not infrequently causing death and more often handicapping the
organism in its attempts to recover from the condition that caused it.
Nature's protective mechanism is, in fact, a two-edged sword striking
both ways, and its control is one of the most serious problems that
the medical profession has to deal with.
There has been much discussion as to the nature of pain, and the mode
by which it is produced, one school holding that there are special
nerves for its transmission and another that it is merely the
expression of a certain grade of irritation. Whatever may be said in
favor of either of these points of view, it can be demonstrated that
pain occurs only when the mind is under a strain and is immediately
relieved when the strain is relieved. This strain may be due to a
local cause, or it may occur without any local cause whatever.
That pain can be produced voluntarily by the mind has long been known.
When I was a student at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Dr. T.
Gaillard Thomas used to tell us that pain could be produced in the
little finger, or in any other part of the body, simply by
concentrating the mind upon it. Since then I have repeatedly
demonstrated that pain can be produced by such a simple thing as
imagining a letter or object imperfectly, or trying to look at a point
for an appreciable length of time. I never knew these experiments to
fail when patients could be induced to make them; but they are so
uncomfortable that few are willing to do so. A physician under
treatment for imperfect sight boasted that he had never had a headache
or pain in his eyes in his life. I told him that I could easily show
him how to produce such a pain, and that it would do him good to have
one. After a week of talk he consented to make the experiment, and in
a few minutes he had acquired a headache that was more interesting
than pleasant. He did it by trying to look fixedly at a point. This
effect was purely mental. It was not the physical strain of looking at
a point that produced the pain, because there was no physical strain,
the eye being incapable of looking at a point. It was the mental
effort of trying to do what was impossible.
As pain can be produced by the mind without any local cause, so it can
be prevented or relieved by the mind, no matter how great the local
irritation may be. In other words pain is a mental interpretation of
certain stimuli, and under certain circumstances such stimuli are not
interpreted as pain. This, too, has long been known, there being cases
on record in which individuals have possessed the power of preventing
pain to an extraordinary extent. I may claim to have discovered,
however, that everyone may become the possessor of this power.
It is only when the mind is in an abnormal condition that pain can be
felt, or even imagined, and irritations of the nerves are followed by
pain only when such irritations produce mental strain. If the mind is
not disturbed by them, there is no pain, and therefore, by learning to
avoid this disturbance pain can be prevented, or relieved.
As the mind is always at rest when the memory is perfect, the mental
condition necessary for the prevention and relief of pain can be
obtained by the use of the memory. One of the simplest things to
remember is a small black spot or period, and under certain
circumstances anyone may become able to remember such an object. This
cannot be done, it is true, at the actual moment of suffering, but,
fortunately, pain is never continuous. One can see, or hear, or smell
continuously; but one cannot feel pain continuously. There are always
moments of freedom, and during these intermissions one can get control
of the memory. In this way the pain of glaucoma, one of the most
terrible conditions known to medical science, has been repeatedly
relieved (see "Better Eyesight", December, 1920). Many cases of
trigeminal neuralgia have been cured after various operations commonly
resorted to for the relief of this condition had failed, and the pain
of childbirth and of operations has been prevented.
Persons with perfect sight never have any difficulty in preventing
pain by the aid of the memory. Persons whose sight is not normal have
more difficulty, because imperfect sight is the result of mental
strain, and it is sometimes very difficult to relieve this strain.
With the help of a person who has normal sight and understands the use
of the memory for this purpose, however, it can always be done.
____
Pain Number
Better Eyesight
A monthly magazine devoted to the prevention and cure of imperfect
sight without glasses
Copyright, 1921, by the Central Fixation Publishing Company
Editor—W. H. Bates, M.D.
Publisher—Central Fixation Publishing Co.
$2.00 per year, 20 cents per copy
342 West 42nd Street, New York, N. Y.
Vol. IV - February 1921 - No. 2
____
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| Neil Brooks... |
| Posted: Wed Oct 28, 2009 9:48 am |
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On Oct 28, 9:59 am, Lelouch Lamperouge <misa... at (no spam) googlemail.com> wrote:
[worthless third-hand anecdote from long dead guy snipped] |
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