The Song of Our Scars: The Untold Story of Pain eBook

A doctor?s personal and unsparing account of how modern medicine?s failure to understand pain has made care less effective In?The Song of Our Scars,?physician?Haider Warraich offers a bold reexamination of the nature of pain, not as a simple physical sensation, but as a cultural experience. Warraich,?himself?a sufferer of chronic pain,?considers the ways our notions of pain have been shaped not just by science but by politics and power,?by?whose suffering mattered and whose didn?t.?He weaves?a provocative history?from the?Renaissance, when pain?transformed into a medical issue,?through?the racial legacy of pain tolerance,?to the opiate epidemics of both the?nineteenth?and?twenty-first?centuries, to the cutting edge of present-day pain science. The?conclusion?is clear: only by reckoning with both pain?s?complicated history?and?its?biology?can today?s doctors adequately treat their patients? suffering. Trenchant and deeply felt,?The Song of Our Scars?is?an?indictment of a?broken system and a?plea for a more holistic understanding of the human body.