ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author's hypothesis is that suffering is the more fundamental concept of the two, and that pain is one of several possible forms of suffering. He argues that malady is a form of suffering and that being sick is a form of suffering. The author also argues that, understood in this way, it becomes self-evident that the relief of suffering should be one of the goals of medicine. A great deal of contemporary discussion of pain and suffering is inherently dualistic. It distinguishes pain from suffering by saying that pain is a bodily sensation while suffering is a psychological reaction to such pain. Aristotle's positing of an 'appetitive part of the soul' is based on the commonsense phenomenological observation that the human person desires things and strives to attain them. Whether suffering at the spiritual dimensions of people being can be relieved by curing malady, relieving pain, rehabilitating the sick and injury is a contingent matter.
