PAINS AND ACHES

Evening Star, Issue 21722, 17 May 1934, Page 11

PAINS AND ACHES

SOME OTHER BLESSINGS A famous professor, whoso name for all his fame the world has forgotten (writes “ Physicus,” in the ‘ West Australian’), once threw out the suggestion that if the Almighty were ever contemplating a New Creation he (the professor) would be glad to point out a number of mistakes that were made in the case of Adam, and that he would also (presumably for a small fee) bo more than glad to recommend the necessary alterations to ensure the production of a perfect humanity on this occasion. A perfect humanity! The prospect appalls one! It is a point hotly contested by the scientist and the scholar (terms not always synonymous!) whether in the Beginning-of-All-Things we (meaning animals, plants, and every Jiving thing) were born perfect, that is, free of all taint of disease. While the argument vitally concerns the man in the street, it does not interest him; what does interest him is the steps the doctor is taking to dissipate the host of diseases which with the passage of time, and much in the manner of tho rolling stone, man and beast and plant have picked up and nurtured in their being! Within bounds that may respectfully be defined as reasonable, the Creator has provided every one of us with weapons or at least some defensive apparatus with which to meet the buffetmgs of a hard world. Let us, for instance, take our bony points. Not a bony point in the body but is protected by a most serviceable covering in tho shape of a pneumatic bag—on? it is not pneumatic!—which takes the full force of any shock the bony point is subjected to. If it were not for these Nature-cushions tho baby would not gurgle with surprised delight every time he sits down suddenly during tlxose first laughable efforts of his to walk upright; we grown-ups would not enjoy with the relish we dq those interminable rides on the hard seats of our trams, nor would we dare to rap so vigorously on the bar with our knuckles, nor when supplied with the water-of-life lean our elbows so airily—that is to say, heavily—on its lino d surface while we put the world to rights. Neither would the devout o’Sundays drop so unconcernedly on their knees to say their prayers. If you really wish to know how thankful wo should be for this wise provision of Nature just ask tho next man you see with a half-amputated finger to tap witli that fore-shortened digit on a door. or on a tabic, or on the piano. For the surgeon lias not yet qualified who can devise a covering for a sawn-off bone that approaches Nature’s protective covering as nearly as 1 per cent. HOUSEMAID’S KNEES. Now bountiful, or shall wc merely say lavish, as Nature has been in this respect, it is not a sufficient protection for some people who, almost with malice aforethought, abuse these same protective devices with gross indignities until instead of being a protection they arc turned into an everstanding menace, and finally into a miniature hell in the shape of a bunion or a housemaid’s knee. For bunions and housemaid’s knees arc but inflammatory conditions of the bursao or protective bags which cover _ the bony points,. Those painful afflictions are not hurled indiscriminately at various members of the community, so to speak, as so many other diseases seem to be in the present state of our medical knowledge; but, as has been explained, arc solely tho result of an abuse on the part of their owner of the very device which Nature had installed for his protection. It is a fact which stimulates thought, for may it not be that ail tho oilier diseases which, in

the airy persiflages of the poet “ flesh is heir to,” arc the result of some similar abuse on our part of other protective mechanisms scattered about the body P • ' , , ~ But fur and away the most highly specialised protective mechanism the body enjoys is pain. It will probably come as a shock to many people to hear pain described as a blessing, but that exactly is what it is, _ It is preeminently a blessing, and if you ponder it a moment or two you will be forced to admit that it is just the cutest way that Nature [could have devised to call our attention to the fact that something, is wrong somewhere, that some portion of our system is being imposed upon, or starved, or poisoned, or otherwise ill-used. Instead, therefore, of abusing the next spasm of pain that you are called upon to bear, you should hail it as a protective mechanism of the first importance and as one of the greatest blessings that a bountiful Nature has bestowed upon you. Of course, the true force of this is only borne upon you if it is someone else who has the pain. PAIN NOT A CURSE.

Pain, then, is not only a blessing, it is an invaluable aid in finding out what it is that has gone wrong with the system. For the most part, the trouble lies just where the pain emanates from, so that when you find the flaxeiihaired darling of your heart wrestling with tears and moans and groans, doubled up, and firmly hanging on to his “ tummy ” with his arms, you need hardly go beyond his “tummy” for tho cause of the trouble. It is certainly not in his big toe. But though you may generally look on the “tummy” as the cause of a “ tummy ache,” you will not be so well advised to look to the head alone as the cause of a headache. In this case the cause is generally elsewhere, though nevertheless the pain in the head has provided us with a valuable clue in the location of the root cause. Many parents get quite upset when bringing their children to the doctor for some pain in the knee, the doctor often disregards the knee and goes carefully over tho hip; for tubercular trouble in tho hip may start off with pains in the knee. A fact which startled the public some years ago was tliajb half of the people sent into the big London hospitals with appendicitis were found on admission to have pneumonia; and contrariwise half of the “ pneumonias ” sent in turned out to be “ appendixes. The explanation in these cases was that the patients were found to bo in a high fever and complaining of an acute pain in the appendix region. Any diagnosis did to get them into hospital, where there was leisure to go into their case and a proper diagnosis made. But tho point is that sometimes one of the first symptoms of pneumonia —that is a disease of the lungs—is referred to the lower part of the audomcn ! This is what is called a “referred pain,” but it does not do away with the truth of the assertion that pain is a blessing, not a curse. Pain becomes a curse for the patient only when some misguided person, usual!,v the patient himself, insists on treating the pain instead of the cause of the pain. It is, or should be, common knowledge that the doctor can stop any pain; but in most cases it is criminal to do so, for it deprives the doctor of a u\ost valuable aid in the cure of the disease. Naturally the doctor eases the pain, but stop it entirely? No, except in. say, incurable cases. COUGHS ANOTHER BLESSING. Closely allied to a real pain is the cough which afflicts us at awkward moments. “Confound this cough! is a common expression heard, but it would be more expressive of the gratitude we should feel if we were to exclaim with as much of a smile as we could muster up: “Good old cough! Atta boy! For how are we to know that we Inn e trouble in our throats and lungs unless we find ourselves coughing and complaining more or less of pain? ■' cougli ijmy lie awkward, but it is never a

curse; it is every bit a blessing, and we should encourage it until we have cleared out of our lungs or throats the cause which sent us this danger signal. Supposing we acquired a lung complaint and did not feel it? We wmild be dead before wo knew we were ill, and that would be diastrous for everyone concerned; especially for the patient who would be dead, and for the doctor, who would soon be _on the bread lino for dearth of patients. It is a saddening thought. Coughs, then, like pain, are a blessing, but it is too much to expect that the present generation will give up any of its cherished beliefs and regard them as anything else but curses. Milions of sane, sober, intelligent, or partly intelligent people are at this moment throughout the world doing their utmost to stop themselves coughing instead of clearing up the trouble that is at the bottom of the cough. It is at once tragic, and comical that the average person, I mean male person, prefers to walk about the streets with a hole in his lung rather than with a hole in his trousers. The merest tear in his trousers and they are rushed off to the mender for all the world as if we were only allowed one pair of trousers in' this life. But a large-sized hole in our lungs causes us little concern until we are on the broad of our backs, so that it really looks as if we expected we could get a new lung every time the old one wore out. With pain and coughs go innumerable other blessings. Some are obvious, others not so plain or apparent. In the past innumerable little children have been smacked by their grandmothers for poking their tongue out at them, smacked by their mothers for dropping cups and saucers, smacked by their teachers for making faces at them. It was the grandmother and the mother and the teacher who should have been smacked, for the child was merely trying to impress on them that he (or she) was heading straight for St. Vitus dance, with all its dreadful and far-reaching complications.