Why We Hurt: The Natural History of Pain |
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Why We Hurt: The Natural History of Pain
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by Jr., Frank T. Vertosick
Sales Rank: 347579
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List Price: $17.00
$0.26
At Amazon
on 6-22-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Paperback with 312 pages
Published by: Harvest Books June 14, 2001
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 0156014033
ISBN 13 Number: 978-0156014038
Book Dimensions:
8 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
Weighs: 11.4 ounces
Product Review
If you've been paying attention, you've noticed by now that pain and suffering infiltrate nearly every part of life. Whether it's an executive nursing a quiet ulcer in the boardroom or a wailing child holding a skinned knee on the playground, this uniquely unpleasant signal must be important; if it weren't, we could more easily ignore it. Neurosurgeon Frank T. Vertosick Jr. explains the evolutionary, physiological, and psychological reasons for pain in Why We Hurt: The Natural History of Pain. Not a paean to despair, the book helps to ease suffering through understanding and learning just how far we've come in the short history of palliative practice. Vertosick's long experience working with sufferers of hideously intractable pain, and his own long battle with migraine, provides depth and illustrative stories that draw the reader into what might otherwise be dry medicalese.
It's heartening to see more surgeons like Dr. Vertosick coming to accept the often-strong psychological basis of pain and appropriate nonsurgical, nonpharmacologic treatments for it. Certainly, as in the case of the lady whose trigeminal nerve was eroded by a circulatory tangle, cutting and suturing have their appropriate place. And the author found several years ago that simple acetaminophen was all he needed to stave off his headaches. His gentle explanations and usually uplifting stories help us prepare for our own episodes of suffering. Though it might seem like small comfort, learning Why We Hurt can be as powerful as the strongest narcotic, with no side effects. --Rob Lightner
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
This accessible and compassionate exploration of physical pain should be of great interest since, at one time or another, almost everyone has experienced severe or recurrent pain. As a neurosurgeon, Vertosick (When the Air Hits Your Brain) has treated patients with migraines, back problems, neuralgia, rheumatoid arthritis, angina and cancer. Drawing on case histories from his practice and on scientific research, he surveys the experience and the processes of pain, as well as the idea of it. He gives a brief, clearly stated history of painful conditions, explains how and why pain strikes and describes the various ways medical intervention can ease or eradicate pain. He also reflects on his wife's labor pains; details the history of anesthesia (a medical invention that he rates as "high among the greatest achievements of our age"); and tells a series of stories about how he and his patients have dealt with their pain. He recounts, for example, how he worked with Anne, a patient whose ruptured disc prevented her from walking on one of her legs. First he tried physical therapy, steroids and narcotic medications to alleviate her pain. Then, when all these treatments failed, he performed the back surgery that enabled her to recover. Combining personal narrative with scientific explanation, Vertosick, who describes himself as "a bit of a wimp" who dislikes seeing patients in pain, displays an enormous dedication to relieving suffering. (June)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Reader Reviews
This review is from: Why We Hurt: The Natural History of Pain (Hardcover)
Dr. Vertosick has written a fine collection of vignettes of patients suffering from chronic pain, from his perspective as a practicing neurosurgeon. Detracting from his storytelling skills, however, are the errors of fact and intepretation which appear throughout the book. Most egregious is the confusion of nitrous oxide for nitric oxide, the molecule used ubiquitously in our bodies for vascular regulation and neurotransmission. This is not simply a spelling error, since Dr. Vertosick goes ahead and mistakenly identifies the subject of the 1998 Nobel prize (nitric oxide) as "laughing gas" (nitrous oxide). Despite the similarity in nomenclature, the two gases are completely different in their physiological roles and effects. Perhaps in an effort to justify the grandiose title, many appeals to evolutionary theory are made. These efforts are stretches at best, and wrong at times. For example, the speculation that the malaise produced by the flu may be adaptive to humans by limiting viral spread through social contact ignores the fact that the individual, not the group, is the most important locus of Darwinian selection. A more likely adaptive explanation for the clinical symptoms of the flu is that inactivity and fever allow the infected body to concentrate its physiological resources against the invaders. In a discussion on how nitroglycerin relieves the crushing chest pain (and myocardial ischemia) of angina, the explanation was given that the body's arteries dilate, thus making it easier for the suffering heart to pump blood forward. In fact. the major effect of nitroglycerin is to dilate the veins, providing the heart with lesser volumes of blood to pump. While lauding the pain relief given to his laboring wife by epidural analgesia, Dr. Vertosick reports that the epidural prolonged the birth process. Although there is a correlation between the use of an epidural and longer labor, the current medical literature attributes this to the likelihood that women with complicated- and longer - labor are more likely to request an epidural, not that an epidural prolongs the childebirth process. Finally, and this probably falls in the "nitpicking" category, the bacterium causing leprosy belongs to the same genus as that causing tuberculosis, not the same species as claimed in the book. I did not read the book with an intention to find errors, but there are mistakes which jump out at the biomedically literate reader. I would still recommend the book as a good introduction to the problem of chronic pain, written with sympathy and clinical insights. However, it is disturbing that a book written by a physician would contain so many factual errors of a biological or medical nature. I wish the author - or his editors - would clean up the text for a second edition.
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Why We Hurt: The Natural History of Pain
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