ABSTRACT
For many centuries in the Western world, pain was thought to be unavoidable – either an affliction every mortal must endure or a punishment for sin. In more religious eras, all pain had meaning and purpose and was therefore not to be eradicated merely for the sake of greater personal comfort or convenience. Physicians, too, gave meaning to pain by identifying it as an important symptom that provided clues to the identity of a particular disease or warned of some significant danger to the body. Pain should not be masked, lest in ignoring it the victim fall prey to an even worse fate. Besides, doctors disdained the relief of symptoms as mere empiricism, scarcely better than quackery, and certainly unworthy of the intellectual legacy of their profession. Instead, physicians preferred to address the underlying causes of disease, usually basing their treatments on the concept of the four classical humours that were believed to form each person’s constitution. It was the doctors’ goal to maintain or restore a healthy humoral equilibrium by adjusting the balance between individuals and their environment. Pain, it was thought, would abate when the imbalance that caused it was corrected. It is therefore difficult to identify what substances were historically used as analgesics. Even the opiates were more often used to ‘make a powerful impression on the nervous system, with a view of breaking up morbid action’ than simply to relieve pain (Beck, 1851).
