Cases of neuralgia spasmodica, commonly termed tic douloureux, successfully treated.

  • Hutchinson, Benjamin.
Date:
1822
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Cases of neuralgia spasmodica, commonly termed tic douloureux, successfully treated. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

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    Pain also itself is not without its alleviations. It may be violent and frequent; but it is seldom both violent and long continued: and its pauses and intermissions become posi- tive pleasures. It has the power of shedding a satisfaction over intervals of ease, which, I believe, few enjoyments exceed. A man resting from a fit of the stone or gout, (or of any disease accompanied with excruciating pain,) is for the time, in possession of feelings, which undisturbed health cannot impart. They may be dearly bought, but still they are to be set against the price. And, indeed, it depends upon the duration and urgency of the pain, whether they be dearly bought or not. I am far from being sure, that a man is not a gainer by suffering a moderate interruption of bodily ease for a couple of hours out of the four and twenty. Two very common ob- servations favour this opinion: one is, that remissions of pain call forth, from those who experience them, stronger * expressions of satisfaction and of gratitude, towards both the author and the instruments of their relief, than are excited by advantages of any other kind : the second is, that the spirits of sick men, do not sink in proportion to the acuteness of their sufferings : but rather appear to be roused and supported, not by pain, but by the high degree of comfort which they derive from its cessation, or even its subsidency, whenever that occurs : and which they taste with a relish that diffuses some portion of men- tal complacency over the whole of that mixed state of sensations, in which disease has placed them. Paley's Natural Theology page 408.