Out of Hours Books

Agony’s journey quotes and illustrations she unpicks the more widely around the meaning of pain The Story of Pain: struggle of communicating pain to others and is an encouragement to do better. From Prayer To Painkillers and the estrangement pain produces. Joanna Bourke The use of metaphor to describe pain David Seamark, Oxford University Press, 2014 has evolved with militaristic, mechanical, GP, Honiton Surgery, Honiton. HB, 416pp, £20.00, 978-0-19-968942-2 and industrial metaphors replacing those E-mail: [email protected] from classical literature, nature, and rural life. Electricity entered early on into the DOI: 10.3399/bjgp15X684145 language of pain and remains with us today in descriptions of neuropathies and * * * * * neuralgias. Religion is shown to interpret pain as in the waters being a consequence of sin and yet a force Diseased, Douched & Doctored. for personal improvement, as well as a path Thermal Springs, Spa Doctors towards salvation. For many the invention and Rheumatic Diseases of chloroform and ether anaesthetics and Roger Rolls effective analgesics dealt a serious blow to London Publishing Partnership, 2012 the doctrine that pain was a spiritual good PB, 256pp, £19.99, 978-1-907994-04-3 and a secular backlash to this view ensued. The final chapter on pain relief deals with Joanna Bourke, Professor of History at the advent of anaesthesia and morphine and Birkbeck College, presents an in-depth the reluctance of the medical profession to analysis of the language of pain and its employ these agents. Today the persistence interpretation by sufferers and clinicians of poor pain control, especially for patients drawn from Western literature of the with chronic pain despite the availability of past three centuries. This book is not powerful analgesics and supplementary a physiological description of pain or a treatments is perplexing. Bourke examines handbook of pain control. Who is it for? possible causes from both sufferers and Anyone wanting a deeper understanding clinician perspectives and concludes that: of pain and its meaning for them and their patients, for those involved in pain clinics, ‘Pain does not emerge naturally from palliative care, and pain research. physiological processes, but in negotiation The earlier chapters explore the with social worlds.’ After thriving since Roman times, ‘In recent difficulties of describing and defining pain. years the medical profession has largely Love has a rich language, pain a thin one, Patients in pain are a constant feature of forsaken its interest in spas.’. Roger Rolls although Bourke does a fine job in distilling our professional lives and produce mixed has given us a detailed, well-illustrated what has been written. Using frequent emotions in us. This book helped me think history of Bath, our best-known spa. On www.docrat.com.au

146 British Journal of General Practice, March 2015 Out of Hours Television

reading of the ebb and flow of novel ideas Sex pioneers add fuel to the (the overhead operating light purchased via about how the waters might be therapeutic, sixties social revolution eBay). The talented Martin Sheen plays the it is natural to question why was belief in driven . their powers maintained for so long? and The trials and tribulations of this unusual One answer was given by Voltaire who Sony Pictures Entertainment, 2014 research programme are amusing, told us that the duty of the physician is to endearing, and fascinating as it explores entertain the patient while nature effects a variety of sexual and social issues of the cure. Sufferers from leprosy, gout, its time. The vital two researchers-odd- paralyses, and a legion of other ailments couple relationship is at the heart of the sought relief at Bath where they, and those dramatisation, but for retired doctors who cared for or preyed on them, gathered. like myself it also induced nostalgia for The spa doctors sought to persuade the days of cigarette-smoking doctors, patients that the mineral waters had healing gynaecologists sporting natty bow ties, and properties. Many reports were written but the bliss of no bleeps or computers. invariably they failed to include a control group and were thus valueless. Nigel Masters, Of course spas would never have had Retired GP, Highfield Surgery, Hazlemere, High any success if people were not open to Wycombe. being persuaded. If we are tempted to E-mail: [email protected] feel superior we should consider the rise William Masters (no relation) was a feted from nowhere of the bottled water industry, consultant obstetrician and fertility expert DOI: 10.3399/bjgp15X684169 based to a large degree on the erroneous at Washington University in St Louis, US, idea that tap water is somehow less than in the early 1960s. He wanted to become safe. world renowned and decided that he could Medicine is its worst when it claims too do this by being the first to meticulously much. Spas offered false solace from an describe the physiology of the normal enormous range of remedies, foul drinks, human sexual response. At the time such and much prolonged bathing. research could cause expulsion from the Diseased, Douched & Doctored is more medical world but had the advantage that than a record of a world we have lost it was not subject to modern-day ethical forever. It is a mirror on our own practice approval! Nevertheless, despite all the today, potentially reprimanding us when odds he was determined to succeed but we claim too much; reproving us for poorly failed to realise that he needed an essential conducted therapeutic trials, and above all, co-worker if he was to achieve his goal: a encouraging people to rely on medicine woman. This partner was Virginia Johnson when health would be likelier to come from who, although totally unqualified and a a good walk, good company, creativity, and single mother of two children, became thinking of others above ourselves. his indispensable colleague and research John Holden, assistant. Based on Thomas Maier’s well- GP, St. Helens, Lancashire. received , Masters of Sex won a E-mail: [email protected] Golden Globe for best drama series in 2013. Masters of Sex has wonderful costumes DOI: 10.3399/bjgp15X684157 and sets producing a post-war feeling of American optimism. Yes, it does have plenty of sex (in real life they observed over 10 000 complete sexual cycles in people of all shapes and sizes) but unlike many television offerings there’s no violence. The series brims with clever ideas and sometimes one simply cannot believe that this really happened. Virginia Johnson (Lizzy Caplan) is the star of the show: the modern intelligent motivated woman without whom the work wouldn’t have been done. The characters are strongly drawn and the hospital setting totally believable

British Journal of General Practice, March 2015 147