ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the way physicians have represented pain visually in mainstream medical texts. It discusses a similar shift in the way pain was represented visually in Anglo-American medical and surgical texts from the early nineteenth century to the late twentieth century. The chapter argues that in the earlier period, visual representations of pain were welcomed because they served to bolster arguments about gestures and facial expressions as a ‘natural language’ that served to ripen the ‘manly sensibility’ of surgeons. It describes the metaphorically thin visual representation of pain in medical commentary from the mid-twentieth century was disrupted when surgeons turned to phantom limbs. There is one major exception to the history of visualisation of pain, however, and that is when physicians turned their analysis to phantom pain. Visualisations of phantom pain can only be understood in relation to the long-standing debates about the nature of pain.
