Feeling No Pain

The doctors have found another painkiller. In a recent issue of the British Medical Journal, Drs. W. M. Wilson and R. B. Hunter of Edinburgh described tests on a new "analgesic" called C.B. II (short for 4:4 -diphenyl -6 -morpho-linoheptan-3-one hydrochloride). It has eased pain from heart disease, sciatica, gangrene, pleurisy, other notorious pain causers. So far no serious disadvantages have shown up. Apparently the drug is not habit-forming.

There is little chance that C.B. II will prove the perfect, all-purpose painkiller--or that any such wonder drug will ever be found. Pain is a complicated and mysterious thing. It is often dangerous not to feel it, for it is the body's alarm system. But pain sometimes rings the alarm so loudly and long that it upsets the body's whole balance. Some kinds of pain the doctors would like to reduce, some they would like to remove entirely.

How "analgesics" (drugs that knock out pain without knocking out the patient) do their work is a mystery, too. Presumably they interfere with the pain messages in the nerves that run from the skin or interior organs through the brain.

According to students of the subject, there are three kinds of painkiller. Some deaden tissue locally. When the dentist shoots procaine, for instance, into gums, it painproofs that area only and keeps it from flashing pain messages toward the brain.

Drugs like aspirin raise the "pain threshold"--i.e., the point where sensations, often pleasant ones, ring the alarm of pain. An affectionate pat becomes a painful slap, for instance, if the patter pats hard enough. A person who has been

PAMELA LAMPHERE First stop on a perilous passage.

treated with a threshold-raising drug must be slapped harder than usual before he considers the sensation a painful one.

The opiates can change the patient's attitude toward his pain. People under the influence of such drugs often say: "I still feel my pain but I don't seem to care." This means that the drug has affected not only the pain-bringing nerves, but in some subtler manner the conscious mind itself.

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