In many cases, a man dies without having incurred nearly
as much pain, during the whole of his fatal illness, as
would have arisen from a whitlow or an abscess of the
jaw. And it is often those deaths which seem most
terrible to the onlooker, which are least so to the
sufferer. When a man is overtaken by an express and
shivered into fragments, or when he drops from a fourth-
floor window and is smashed into a bag of splinters, the
unfortunate spectators are convulsed with horror, and
find a text for pessimistic views about the
Providence which allows such things to be. And yet, it
is very doubtful whether the deceased, could his tongue
be loosened, would remember anything at all about the
matter. We know, as students of medicine, that though
pain is usually associated with cancers and with
abdominal complaints; still, in the various fevers, in
apoplexy, in blood poisonings, in lung diseases, and, in
short, in the greater proportion of serious maladies,
there is little suffering.
I remember how struck I was when first I saw the
actual cautery applied in a case of spinal disease. The
white hot iron was pressed firmly into the patient's
back, without the use of any anaesthetic, and what with
the sight and the nauseating smell of burned flesh I felt
faint and ill. Yet, to my astonishment, the patient
never flinched nor moved a muscle of his face, and on my
inquiring afterwards, he assured me that the proceeding
was absolutely painless, a remark which was corroborated
by the surgeon.
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