CHAPTER 2
 REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE


 Historical Perspective on Pain


 Ever since human beings have been recording the events of their

lives, they have been writing about pain. Efforts to understand and

control pain have brought western civilization from the healer and

shaman to the physician with a team of health professionals. The

Eastern practice of acupuncture for the prevention and treatment of pain

is considered to be more than 5,000 years old. A 20th century observer

visiting a museum or a ruin in North, Central, or South America can see

evidence in artifacts and hieroglyphics of pain intervention by Indian

medicine men.

 Procacci and Maresca (1984), in their review of the pain concept in

western civilization, asserted that "prehistoric people had no

difficulty in understanding pain associated with injury, but they were

mystified by pain caused by disease" (p. 1), so they associated the

latter with magic and demons. These beliefs persist today in

subliterate societies in third world countries. Indeed, the education

of health professionals in the United States consists of at least one

lecture on the superstitious beliefs of such cultures within our

society. Fear of the "mal oho" among Latin Americans and "voodoo death"

among Haitians still exists in a society that can send men to the moon.

Another myth, that somehow pain is associated with demons and sin, also

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