Thesis ID: CBB001561511

Pain and the Pursuit of Objectivity: Pain-Measuring Technologies in the United States, c. 1890--1975 (2006)

unapi

Tousignant, Noemi R. (Author)


McGill University


Publication Date: 2006
Physical Details: 344 pp.
Language: English

Since the late 19 th century, scientists and clinicians have generated an astonishing array of meters, scales, experimental designs, and questionnaires to quantify pain with more precision, accuracy, and objectivity. In this thesis, I follow the development and implementation of pain-measuring technologies in the United States until the mid-1970s. Focussing on how these technologies work, I analyse the relationship between practices of objectification; the social, material and technical resources on which these practices depend; and changing conceptions of pain, subjectivity and objectivity. Surprisingly, as efforts to objectify pain were intensified, pain was increasingly conceptualised as a subjective experience, that is, as a phenomenon inextricably tied to the unique emotional, psychological, and social condition of the experiencing self. I argue that this transformation was not solely due to the development of new theoretical models of pain, but also, importantly, enabled by the implementation of new technologies that could measure pain as an individual and psychological phenomenon. I also argue that the successful implementation of these technologies depended on the availability of specific social, material, and technical resources, and examine the social settings in which these resources were made available. The main motivation for the direct investment of new resources towards pain- measuring technologies was a desire to make analgesic drug testing more objective. Beginning in the late 1930s, professional, industrial and public health interests in drug addiction, opiate pharmacology, new drug development and therapeutic testing converged on the goal of better pain-measurement. By the 1950s, the organisation and funding of analgesic testing made it possible to implement and validate the analgesic clinical trial, a technology that determined analgesic efficacy by measuring collective pain and its relief. The validity of the clinical was based on procedural and statistical control of data collection and analysis, rather than on the standardisation of individual experiences and evaluations of pain. It became possible to think of pain relief as an inevitably idiosyncratic experience, open to multiple sources of psychological variation, and yet still measure it consistently and objectively on a collective level. Keywords. pain; measurement; objectivity; subjectivity, clinical trials; analgesics: psychophysics; psychosomatics; history of medicine; history of science.

...More

Description Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 68/05 (2007). Pub. no. AAT NR27851.


Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001561511/

Similar Citations

Chapter Danişman, H. H. Günhan; (2006)
The Introduction of American Surgical Technology in the Ottoman Empire in the 19th Century (/isis/citation/CBB001022421/)

Chapter Burney, Ian; (2006)
Anaesthesia and the Evaluation of Surgical Risk in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Britain (/isis/citation/CBB001221055/)

Book Snow, Stephanie J.; (2008)
Blessed Days of Anaesthesia: How Anaesthetics Changed the World (/isis/citation/CBB000951519/)

Article Olsén, Jan Eric; (2004)
Osäkra avläsningar (/isis/citation/CBB000772814/)

Book Wolf, Jacqueline H.; (2009)
Deliver Me from Pain: Anesthesia and Birth in America (/isis/citation/CBB000951145/)

Article Richard A. Reinhart; (2020)
The Stethoscope in 19th-Century American Practice: Ideas, Rhetoric, and Eventual Adoption (/isis/citation/CBB628696697/)

Chapter Tousignant, Noemi; (2014)
A Quantity of Suffering: Measuring Pain as Emotion in the Mid-Twentieth Century United States (/isis/citation/CBB001202328/)

Book Vostral, Sharra Louise; (2008)
Under Wraps: A History of Menstrual Hygiene Technology (/isis/citation/CBB000831088/)

Book Thomas Schlich; Christopher Crenner; (2017)
Technological Change in Modern Surgery: Historical Perspectives on Innovation (/isis/citation/CBB403385801/)

Thesis Emin-Tunc, Tanfer; (2005)
Technologies of Choice: A History of Abortion Techniques in the United States, 1850--1980 (/isis/citation/CBB001561905/)

Article Rogers, Naomi; (2008)
“Silence Has Its Own Stories”: Elizabeth Kenny, Polio and the Culture of Medicine (/isis/citation/CBB000774305/)

Thesis Charlotte Mary Duffee; (2022)
Fractures: A History and Philosophy of Patient Suffering in 20th-Century American Medicine (/isis/citation/CBB699793549/)

Book Bourke, Joanna; (2014)
The Story of Pain: From Prayer to Painkillers (/isis/citation/CBB001202302/)

Book John Carreyrou; (2018)
Bad blood: secrets and lies in a Silicon Valley startup (/isis/citation/CBB233577951/)

Book Altenstetter, Christa; (2014)
Medical Technology in Japan: The Politics of Regulation (/isis/citation/CBB001422095/)

Article Carlo Ginzburg; (2017)
Schemi, preconcetti, esperimenti a doppio cieco. Riflessioni di uno storico (/isis/citation/CBB147802268/)

Authors & Contributors
Upshur, Ross
Duffee, Charlotte Mary
John Carreyrou
Richard A. Reinhart
Schaffzin, Gabriel Yuval
Tousignant, Noemi
Journals
Mefisto: Rivista di medicina, filosofia, storia
Social History of Medicine
Polhem: Tidskrift för Teknikhistoria
Journal of the History of the Neurosciences
Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences
Canadian Bulletin of Medical History/Bulletin Canadienne d'Histoire de la Medecine
Publishers
Oxford University Press
University of Maine
University of California, San Diego
State University of New York at Stony Brook
University of Rochester Press
Transaction Publishers
Concepts
Medicine
Medical instruments and apparatus
Medical technology
Pain
Medicine and technology, relationships
Therapeutic practice; therapy; treatment
People
Laennec, René Théophile Hyacinthe
Kenny, Elizabeth
Du Bois-Reymond, Emil Heinrich
Time Periods
19th century
20th century
20th century, late
21st century
18th century
Early modern
Places
United States
Europe
England
New England (U.S.)
Japan
Ottoman Empire
Institutions
Theranos (firm)
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment