Pain Disorder, Hysteria or Somatization?

Pain used to be a simple issue. It was caused by physical injury or disease and the sufferer had to rest and take opium. That was about two hundred years ago. A few scattered commentators from Jeremiah (Lamentations I:12-13) to Montaigne (1) had the idea that emotion could cause pain or influence it...

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Main Author: Harold Merskey
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Wiley 2004-01-01
Series:Pain Research and Management
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2004/605328
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author Harold Merskey
author_facet Harold Merskey
author_sort Harold Merskey
collection DOAJ
description Pain used to be a simple issue. It was caused by physical injury or disease and the sufferer had to rest and take opium. That was about two hundred years ago. A few scattered commentators from Jeremiah (Lamentations I:12-13) to Montaigne (1) had the idea that emotion could cause pain or influence it. The development of anatomical knowledge, closely followed by physiology and then pathology, produced a dilemma. There were many pains that could not be explained by the most modern physical methods of the nineteenth century. Hodgkiss (2) has tersely labelled the problem as "pain without lesion". The nineteenth century solution lay in a diagnosis of hysteria.
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spelling doaj-art-3b492775a14f4d9f82cdd8ad5fda4e6a2025-08-20T02:08:02ZengWileyPain Research and Management1203-67652004-01-0192677110.1155/2004/605328Pain Disorder, Hysteria or Somatization?Harold MerskeyPain used to be a simple issue. It was caused by physical injury or disease and the sufferer had to rest and take opium. That was about two hundred years ago. A few scattered commentators from Jeremiah (Lamentations I:12-13) to Montaigne (1) had the idea that emotion could cause pain or influence it. The development of anatomical knowledge, closely followed by physiology and then pathology, produced a dilemma. There were many pains that could not be explained by the most modern physical methods of the nineteenth century. Hodgkiss (2) has tersely labelled the problem as "pain without lesion". The nineteenth century solution lay in a diagnosis of hysteria.http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2004/605328
spellingShingle Harold Merskey
Pain Disorder, Hysteria or Somatization?
Pain Research and Management
title Pain Disorder, Hysteria or Somatization?
title_full Pain Disorder, Hysteria or Somatization?
title_fullStr Pain Disorder, Hysteria or Somatization?
title_full_unstemmed Pain Disorder, Hysteria or Somatization?
title_short Pain Disorder, Hysteria or Somatization?
title_sort pain disorder hysteria or somatization
url http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2004/605328
work_keys_str_mv AT haroldmerskey paindisorderhysteriaorsomatization