REFINEMENT AND PAIN.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXII, Issue XVII, 29 April 1899, Page 578

REFINEMENT AND PAIN.

The greater a person’s refinement fhe more susceptible is he to pain. I his is the conclusion of a scientist who has pursued a careful investigation of this subject during the last nve years, making over 1,000 experiments on men, women, and children. I he machine used in the experiments is one of the investigator’s own invention. known as the ‘algometer.’ Women, he says, are more sensitive to pain than men. Professional men arc more sensitive to pain than business men. Artisans and unskilled labourers are much less sensitive to pain than professional and mercantile men. W omen who work hard are much less sensitive than those in more comfortable conditions, and wealthy young men more sensitive than working men. As to pain, it is true that women are more sensitive than men. but it does not follow that women cannot endure more pain. The left hand is more susceptible to pain than the right. The sensibility to pain decreases as age increases. The left temple is more sensitive than the right. Girls in private schools, who are generally of wealthy parents, are more sensitive than girls in public schools. It would appear that luxuries tend to increase sensitiveness to pain. The hardships which the great majority must experience seem advantageous. Following this line of result, university women are more sensitive than washerwomen, but less sensitive than business women. Given, then, the divisions in the order of their sensitiveness to pain, they would stand as follows: — First, girls of the wealthy class; second, self-educated women; third, business women; fourth, universitv women: fifth, washerwomen. The high sensitiveness of the self-educa-ted woman as compared with university women may be due to the overtaxing of the nervous systems of the former in their unequal struggle for knowledge.