OCR Text |
Show Danger Sir-rials Warnings Which Wo L'.UGt Cbcy. ape r!T!(Fpo pij?F;r. cvnr" HiiL l.rl I LiiL O rii-;.L. uio.-..i In the midst of pressing political Uusini'ss I'resitlent Coulidge took time off to write u cordial letter accepting i he honorary presidency of the Cordis Memorial Institute of Tropical and i'reventive Medicine, to be established it Panama City. Five million dollars is to be raised for this purpose by popular subscription, and no more difficulty dif-ficulty is anticipated in securing this amount than was experienced by the lied Cross in raising funds for stricken Japan. Aini'rii-an generosity knows no stint when relieving human pain is ihe object In view. Nor is this high valuation of pain a modern development. The early Ko-iimn Ko-iimn law, while recognizing slavery, carefully prescribed the amount ol ;uln any master might inflict upon his slaves. During the Middle Ages, when the value of pain was lost sight if, great barbarity and decadence resulted. re-sulted. But English law began, grad lnlly, to take account of pain. If one ..lersou injured another, the individual 'nirt could collect more damages finals fin-als pain nnd suffering than could be ollected by his heirs If he were killed lutright. American law today, In most states. Units' the damage for, accidental kill-'ng kill-'ng of another person to a fixed amount, usually about $5,000. but if he injured individual lives, even for i few seconds, and suffers conscious pain, there is no limit to the sum a :ury may award for his suffering. No Pain Inside of Body. Nearly everybody instinctively agrees with this high valuation ol ;inin, but very few realize the high ralue that nature herself has placed apon it in building up the human organism. or-ganism. Pain is the danger signal, md our bodies are so made that we ire obliged to obey It, whether we vant to or not. And the receiving I stations for this natural danger signal ire distributed over the body just vhere they will do the most good. Scientists of ancient times believed hat the whole body, inside and out. .-. as sensitive to pain. Surgeons began :o operate, however, before anesthetics anesthet-ics were discovered, and as a result of his early surgery, it was found that ' rhere were regions inside the body A-here no pulu at all was felt. The Intestines, for instance, can be cut and handled quite roughly with : out pain to the owner. This is a com i'orting fact to remember when the uapers report that some hardy pa tient has taken only a local anesthetic, anes-thetic, so that he can watch the op eration performed upon himself. Cutting Cut-ting through the body wall would be gainful, but the local anesthetic, usually an Injection of cocaine, stops ill sensation there. And once the sur-1,'eon sur-1,'eon gets inside the body he can cut away to his heart's content without Mothering the patient at all. This fact led investigators to the conclusion '.hat they must look for special pain irgans In the body. : Millions of Pain Spots. Everybody knows that sticking a I needle into the llesh is a painful ex-i ex-i pedenee. But only those who have experimented upon themselves with onsiflerable care realize that there are many spots to be found where a aeeil e can be thrust deeply into the ' body without causing the slightest ' .etisation. Again, there are places 1 ..here the slightest touch of the i leedle's point arouses pain instantly. These are called "pain spots," and 1 have been plotted out with consider-, consider-, able care by psychological investigators, investiga-tors, as a seammi plots out Islands on a navigator's map. It is estimated . i hat the average number of pain spots "ii the human body Is about 3,000,000. After this discovery, it was thought that the problem of pain organs was " solved. Each pain spot was found to lie near the end of a tiny nerve fibril, and It was believed that an organ too imull to be seen with the microscope must be attached to the nerve ending o give rise to the feeling of pain. But -aich theoretical organs have never been found. i in the contrary, it has since been iound that only those nerves which t bave no special organs, called "end organs," or-gans," attached to them can cause pain ut the slightest touch. But other nil organs, which at first produce a sensation of touch, or of cold, or of warmth, will cause pain if the pres-itire pres-itire or temperature applied to thein s too intense. The difference is only 'ine of intensity of "stimulation." This iiscovery has led to an entirely new henry of pain in recent years, which i-ediis the nerves back of the skin .uih causing a sensation to be felt as iiiinful. An English physician, Doctor Head, resolved to sacrifice his own nerves to science. He had a nerve trunk cut in his elbow, so that no sensations at all mild be felt In his hand and lower oreariu. Then the severed nerve was V.i together, and it began slowlv to heal. As this process went on, there appeared ap-peared areas on bis hand where be could feel touch, hut could feel no ''::i at all. i:o matter how intensely he hand was stimulated. Doctor leail coiiHu'led, therefore, that there aiust be special pain libers in the g'-n al ai'i-ve trunk which had hern cut I'lie iniu-h libers, from the parts of tin hand referred to, healed first, thun carrying their messages of touch to the brain. But until the pain fibers healed no pain whatever could be felt. Safety Valve Nerves. Another Englishman, Doctor Sherrington, Sher-rington, completed the tracing of pain messages from skin to brain, lie experimented ex-perimented upon animals, sending electric currents over the nerves inside in-side the spinal column. As a result Sherrington discovered that whenever any nerve was stimulated too intensely, intense-ly, the excess nerve current was drained olT into a sort of safety-valve nerve, or pain fiber. TIiis we may feel touch and pain at the same time, from the same cause. But when these pain fibers reach the spine they are all combined into a sort of pain conduit, where all the nverintense nerve currents, or impulses im-pulses from all over the body, can travel without burning out the rst of the nervous system. Thus has nature provided a special telephone line, as il were, between the outside of the boily and the brain, made of extra heavy wire to carry emergency messages. We begin to feel pain, probably, before be-fore we are born. Certainly within a few hours after birth the baby stomach stom-ach begins to squeeze together causing caus-ing "hunger pangs." Immediately all else is forgotten. The baby cries and howls until he gets his food, and his internal pain Is thus stopped. Similarly, with grown-ups, a good, sharp hunger pang will take precedence prece-dence of all else. The words of a friend gain scant attention, once the hunger pangs begin. And, in light of the discoveries of Head and Sherrington, Sherring-ton, we know why this must be so. The pain messages have a specially built trunk-line to the brain, so that they can always take precedence over all other sensations. A pain always means that the body is being injured, and nature has devised the clever pain above described to force us to pay Immediate attention to the spot threatened. If it were not for this emergency pain signal, a baby's hand, for instance, in-stance, might be burned off before the Infant withdrew it from the fire. In cases of paralysis this sometimes hnp-pens. hnp-pens. Instances have been known in train wrecks where injury to the spine destroyed the pain connection to feet and legs. As a res'dt the injured person per-son may allow his lower limbs to he badly crushed by objects lying upon them, whereas, if nature's telephone system were intact be would be forced to exert himself and remove the dan gerous weight. Our bodies, in short, are so arran.:e'l that whenever we feel pain we know we must get rid of It instantly, at all costs. History shows that nat:op-whose nat:op-whose laws and customs have ph'rf.i the highest value on getting rid of pain have advanced most rapidly. The quick response of the United States re the call of human suffering is, there fore, one of the h-nltlii"st signs nf American progress. Chicago Iiail |