ABSTRACT
Pain is a universal condition. There is, however, very little known about its mechanisms and influencing factors. From a biomedical perspective, pain has been considered almost synonymous with tissue damage. The French philosopher René Descartes was one of the first to present a mechanical pain model. In this model there are direct and unique pain pathways from the peripheral nervous system to the brain, in the same way the bell in a church tower rings when the rope attached to it is pulled. For Descartes, pain was a reflex of the mind upon nociceptive stimulation of the body. Pain was treated as a symptom, isomorphically related to the severity of the underlying pathology of the organism. According to this perspective, pain treatment consists of two acts: localization of the underlying pathology and removal of the pathology with appropriate remedy or cure. In the absence of bodily damage, the mind was assumed to be at fault, and a psychic pathology was inferred. This model has been extremely influential. Even today, most medical pain treatments are based on these assumptions.
