Firnando Chau Review
Pain: The Fifth Vital Sign : The Science and Culture of Why We Hurt - Hardcover (May 28, 2002) by Marni Jackson
About the Book:-
Hardcover: 384 pages
Publisher: Crown; 1st edition (July 9, 2002)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0609603752
ISBN-13: 978-0609603758
From Booklist
Many patients and physicians have wished for a way to quantify pain as we do the other vital signs--blood pressure, temperature, heart beat, and respiration. Jackson explores the history, variety, acknowledgment, and treatment of pain, the fifth vital sign, accessibly and sympathetically, lending the subject personalism by citing her own experiences of pain, which range from a bee sting to her open mouth to anesthetic failure in the middle of a dental operation. She also mines the medical annals, citing such authorities as S. Weir Mitchell and William Livingston, and various literary works. Her interviews with pain experts make lively reading as she queries the likes of Angela Mailis of the Comprehensive Pain Program in Toronto, and Frank Adams, who was found guilty of "medical incompetence and unprofessional conduct" for humanely treating his patients' pain. Finally, her account of the Ninth World Congress on the Study of Pain, in Vienna, graphically depicts the complexity of a large meeting. A book for medical-school and hospital as well as public libraries. William Beatty, Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Other Reviews
“Jackson is an ideal guide for this exploration. With her personal and personable perspective, she acts as a surrogate for the reader, simplifying complex issues (both philosophical and technical) and humanizing often abstract concepts. Jackson leavens this very serious subject matter with a wicked and subversive sense of humour.” -- Quill and Quire
“One might think there was nothing new to say about pain, but Pain: The Fifth Vital Sign is a work of real originality and freshness, full of insights which seem both startling and obvious.” -- Oliver Sacks, MD
“Jackson’s book is a timely and necessary contribution to this important dialogue.” -- The Globe and Mail
About the Book
Pain. Everyone experiences it, yet we have trouble talking about it and science has only recently begun to understand how it works. Pain: The Fifth Vital Sign is a groundbreaking inquiry into the nature, treatment, and definition of modern pain.
In the United States, there has been a recent campaign to treat pain as the fifth vital sign. Just as temperature, respiration, pulse, and blood pressure, the four traditional vital signs, must be charted, hospitals are now obliged to assess pain in their patients, too. If this indeed happens, it will be nothing less than groundbreaking—making pain far more visible.
But how has it come about that we spend $24 billion a year in North America on Tylenol, Advil, and the rest, and yet chronic pain is on the rise? Why is it that medicine can master intrauterine surgery but it can’t help people with bad backs or migraines? Pain is the number one reason why people go to the doctor’s office, and the number one reason they come away disappointed.
For a long time, pain has been a dark continent, both in the body and in our culture.
However, medicine is finally learning to evaluate pain as something more than a symptom—a main focus rather than a frustrating side issue for doctors. In the questing and narrative manner of an Oliver Sacks “neurological novel” or Sherwin Nuland’s inquiry into dying, Pain: The Fifth Vital Sign maps this largely unexplored territory through the stories of people who live with pain—from fibromyalgia to phantom limb pain—as well as the words of pioneers of pain research, and the professional experiences of doctors, scientists, and nurses.
Above all, Pain: The Fifth Vital Sign makes an elusive subject vivid and readable. We all know what pain is. Now it has a voice.
About the Author
MARNI JACKSON is the author of The Mother Zone. She lives in Toronto.
