“PAINFUL” DISCLOSURES

Greymouth Evening Star, 13 September 1934, Page 10

“PAINFUL” DISCLOSURES

■„ B.M.A. CONFERENCE STORIES. BOURNEMOUTH, .July 27. 'Though the subject was “Pain,’’ the biggest of to-day’s audiences, iu the closing meetings of the British Medical Association’s various scientific sections, spent a gdod proportion of the sitting in hearty laughter. The varieties and the curiosities of pain were considered by well-known surgeons from both the physical and psychological points of ii'e'w. Most of the merriment centred in the relation of cases of people immune to pain. A great roar greeted the story of the unfeeling man who was so annoyed by a wounded finger .that lie bit it off. A caustic condemnation of the coddling mother, with lief “soothing words’’ and her “outstretched arms,” was a notable contribution to the debate. “The Spartan mother does fiiake men,” declared the speaker, Dr. T. Gwynne Maitland, of Liverpool. There was in modern life, said Dr. Maitland, a. deliberate and; calculated aversion from all pain bodily and mental. “Pain is an evil to be exorcised. The birch at school is regarded by these people as a degrading instrument of discipline, and they maintain—perhaps not overtly^—that good behaviour shall arise out. of . the conditioned' reflexes of pleasure only. Whatever effort is made to avoid the painful consequences of wrong or mistaken conduct, nevertheless pain has a definitely educational value and the obsession to eliminate it has one unlooked-for consequence in that it is certain to increase sensitivity and enormously extend the field of painful exposure.” . “When the poof .are; denounced for their large families, it should be remembered that they, have . this advantage over the well-to-do—the absence of coddling. Nevertheless, the well-to-do mother feels compelled by social conventions, or has the good sense, to realise the need to send the child away to school. “All those who have charge of the child should pay no attention to the hurt child over and above what is necessary for remedial demands. Pain that is inevitable will then have its proper place; it will not be —as it is with so many—the cause of latent fears and useless inhibitions evinced by the dfdad of all hazards and adventure.”

Sohie remarkable instances of people immune to pain were related by Dr. Macdonald Critcliley, of London. A weedy, miserable type of young man once went to a dentist to have all bis teeth taken out. "I cannot do it to-day because I’ve no anaesthetic,” the dentist eaid. “Well, try your hand on one tooth,” suggested the patient. A tooth was pulled out. “That doesn’t hurt a bit; I didn’t feel it,” the young man declared. “Take out another.” This went on until the whole of the teeth bad been Wtrhcted. 'The patient left toothless, not having experinced the slightest discomfort. Then there was an American musichall artist who could be maltreated in any way with impunity. It was of nd; consequence to him whether he Whs struck on the face with a pickaxe,.his head laid open with a hatehet, or jliL body used as a pincushion. Then he staged a crucifixion for

himself. “The operation began, and they pierced his hands with nails, ’ said Dr. Critchley. “But the performance had to be brought to an end becau,se most of the people in the music-hall had collapsed.”. The degree to which pain may bedominated by the emotions was stressed by Dr. Lionel A. Weatherly, of Bornemouth, who presided. He recalled a patient of his own, a woman, wlio had a predisposition to suicide. After being prevented many times from taking her life, she was sent to a private mental home. One winter’s morning she overpowered a nurse and locked herself in a room in which a big fire was burning. She put red-hot coals all over her body, and was burned to death. As she was expiring she shouted.: “Now I am achieving my object in spite of all of you.”

NOISES AND DEAFNESS. That about 2,500,000 people in Great Britain suffer from defective hearing was computed by Dr. G. P. Crowden. lecturer in Industrial Physiology at tho London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Even among the young men of the nation, he said, between five and six per cent, showed definite evidence of diseases which were associated with impairment of the hearing mechanism.

In certain employments the air vibrations and pressure changes caused by the rhythmic action of the pneumatic tools used frequently placed too great a strain on the delicate hearing apparatus, and efforts were beingmade to protect the worker against this cause of deafness by protectingeach ear of the individual by a suitable defender, and using silencers or less noisy tools for the work. During the discussion, Air Commodore A. V. J. Richardson, of the Royal Air Force, said that although the ears of a pilot were protected while flying, the noise caused fatigue. The most fatiguing aircraft to fly were the most noisy. The R.A.F. authorities were therefore directing their energies to diminishing noise in aircraft.

Everyone is a food faddist chiefly through auto-suggestion and emotion. This was a declaration made by Professor V. H. Mottram (Professor of Physiology in the University of London) at a popular lecture given tonight. A food fad, Professor Mottram said, could be recognised as such when it was defended with emotion and with no regard to the discoveries of science.

The average man could never know what “did him good” in diet because his emotions were all tangled up in his scheme of dietary. The relative proportions of foods eaten had changed. There had been a great decrease in the proportion of meat with an increase in the proportion of cereals, vegetables, and sugar. Changes in fashion which decreased the gargantuan amounts eaten and drunk and increased the variety of foods, particularly vegetables and fruit in winter months, were to be welcomed as dietetically sound. There should be no fads in diet, Professor Mottram declared, and only one fashion, namely, to take an allround mixed diet containing dairy food, market garden produce, and food from the sea, combined with anything else for which one had a fancy!