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Ağrının Hikayesi: Duadan Ağrıkesicilere
İçimizdeki en yakarıcı tonları açığa çıkaran ses, ağrı çeken insanın sesidir ve buna hepimiz aşinayızdır. Istırap paylaşılır; insan olmanın anlamını bir ağ gibi yoğun bir şekilde sarmalamıştır. Bir ağrı-olayı her zaman bireyin yaşamına aittir; onun yaşam öyküsünün bir parçasıdır.
Ağrıyı, hastalık ve hastalık grupları üzerinden değil, ağrı çeken bedenin takdir edilmesi yoluyla daha iyi anlayabileceğimize inanan Joanna Bourke, ağrı çeken insanların kullandığı dilleri analiz ederken, ağrıyla ilgili derin bir kavrayışa sahip olmak isteyen, ağrı klinikleriyle, palyatif bakımla, ağrı araştırmalarıyla ilgisi olan, hastaları ve kendileri için ağrının anlamını bilmek isteyenleri hedefliyor.
Bu ıstırap hastalar, doktorlar ve hemşireler arasındaki klinik karşılaşmalarda nasıl bir rol oynar? Ağrı çeken bir insanın kıvranan bedeni ve söze dökülmeyen inlemelerine tanık olduklarında, bazı tanıklar neden buna sırtını döner? Metaforik ağrı dillerinin incelenmesi, ağrının algılanmasındaki tarihsel değişiklikler hakkında spekülasyonlarda bulunabilmemizi sağlayabilir mi?
Joanna Bourke, üç yüzyıllık Batı literatüründen yararlanarak, ağrı pratiğinin, dil, kültür ve beden arasındaki dinamik iç bağlantılar sürecinde inşa edilme ve yeniden kurulma biçimlerini tarihsel olarak inceliyor.
Joanna Bourke, University of London, Birkbeck College’da tarih profesörü.
Ağrıyı, hastalık ve hastalık grupları üzerinden değil, ağrı çeken bedenin takdir edilmesi yoluyla daha iyi anlayabileceğimize inanan Joanna Bourke, ağrı çeken insanların kullandığı dilleri analiz ederken, ağrıyla ilgili derin bir kavrayışa sahip olmak isteyen, ağrı klinikleriyle, palyatif bakımla, ağrı araştırmalarıyla ilgisi olan, hastaları ve kendileri için ağrının anlamını bilmek isteyenleri hedefliyor.
Bu ıstırap hastalar, doktorlar ve hemşireler arasındaki klinik karşılaşmalarda nasıl bir rol oynar? Ağrı çeken bir insanın kıvranan bedeni ve söze dökülmeyen inlemelerine tanık olduklarında, bazı tanıklar neden buna sırtını döner? Metaforik ağrı dillerinin incelenmesi, ağrının algılanmasındaki tarihsel değişiklikler hakkında spekülasyonlarda bulunabilmemizi sağlayabilir mi?
Joanna Bourke, üç yüzyıllık Batı literatüründen yararlanarak, ağrı pratiğinin, dil, kültür ve beden arasındaki dinamik iç bağlantılar sürecinde inşa edilme ve yeniden kurulma biçimlerini tarihsel olarak inceliyor.
Joanna Bourke, University of London, Birkbeck College’da tarih profesörü.
375 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2014
About the author
Joanna Bourke
38 books69 followersJoanna Bourke (born 1963 in New Zealand) is an historian and professor of history at Birkbeck, University of London.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
August 17, 2014
The Story of Pain: From Prayer to Painkillers
Joanna BourkeThe Story of Pain
(June 26)
In what is surely one of the most interesting books of the summer, Joanna Bourke, a history professor at Birkbeck, University of London and a Fellow of the British Academy, explores the history of pain—how we describe it, how we think about it, and how we deal with it.
Bourke writes that we’ve spent far more time documenting pain alleviation rather than exploring pain itself, and her detailed survey, focusing on the past three centuries, will surprise and inform all readers.
One would think that pain hasn’t changed much over time—pain is pain, after all—but while migraine accounts have remained similar, our relationship to suffering, and sufferers, has changed in dramatic ways. Once thought of as a supernatural punishment or an opportunity for personal growth, pain is now considered an external evil, an inconvenience, something to be eradicated rather than embraced.
Most striking, for me, is the chapter on estrangement. Pain isolates the afflicted, but remarkably, it’s the person in pain who does the distancing. Be it the stigma of sickness, the desire to insulate loved one’s from their suffering, or simply not to be thought of as a whiner, the sufferer tends to keep their agony to themselves.
And as anyone in the throes of a migraine can attest, communication isn’t a vacation. Bourke writes: “As well as isolating people-in-pain from their families and friends, physical discomfort works against human exchange by blunting the higher senses and intellect” (46).
Paradoxically, pain narratives also create and strengthen communities, such as support groups that arise around particular afflictions.
Bourke is no stranger to uncomfortable topics. Her other works include Fear: A Cultural History; Rape: Sex, Violence, History and Dismembering the Male: Men’s Bodies, Britain and the Great War.
Utilizing a variety of sources—old medical books, doctor’s notes, poetry, anecdotes, letters and others—Bourke compiles a well-rounded account of suffering, accessible to academics and casual readers alike.
Reading The Story of Pain is a bit like enjoying a sad song on a sunny day. This intellectual read might not alleviate that next migraine any better than “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” can dampen the sting of heartbreak, but it’s interesting to contemplate from an academic distance.
Joanna BourkeThe Story of Pain
(June 26)
In what is surely one of the most interesting books of the summer, Joanna Bourke, a history professor at Birkbeck, University of London and a Fellow of the British Academy, explores the history of pain—how we describe it, how we think about it, and how we deal with it.
Bourke writes that we’ve spent far more time documenting pain alleviation rather than exploring pain itself, and her detailed survey, focusing on the past three centuries, will surprise and inform all readers.
One would think that pain hasn’t changed much over time—pain is pain, after all—but while migraine accounts have remained similar, our relationship to suffering, and sufferers, has changed in dramatic ways. Once thought of as a supernatural punishment or an opportunity for personal growth, pain is now considered an external evil, an inconvenience, something to be eradicated rather than embraced.
Most striking, for me, is the chapter on estrangement. Pain isolates the afflicted, but remarkably, it’s the person in pain who does the distancing. Be it the stigma of sickness, the desire to insulate loved one’s from their suffering, or simply not to be thought of as a whiner, the sufferer tends to keep their agony to themselves.
And as anyone in the throes of a migraine can attest, communication isn’t a vacation. Bourke writes: “As well as isolating people-in-pain from their families and friends, physical discomfort works against human exchange by blunting the higher senses and intellect” (46).
Paradoxically, pain narratives also create and strengthen communities, such as support groups that arise around particular afflictions.
Bourke is no stranger to uncomfortable topics. Her other works include Fear: A Cultural History; Rape: Sex, Violence, History and Dismembering the Male: Men’s Bodies, Britain and the Great War.
Utilizing a variety of sources—old medical books, doctor’s notes, poetry, anecdotes, letters and others—Bourke compiles a well-rounded account of suffering, accessible to academics and casual readers alike.
Reading The Story of Pain is a bit like enjoying a sad song on a sunny day. This intellectual read might not alleviate that next migraine any better than “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” can dampen the sting of heartbreak, but it’s interesting to contemplate from an academic distance.
March 5, 2018
I got this book a number of years ago. I read a couple of chapters and put it down. Sometimes academic reading is a bit overwhelming. I tend to say there's a time for everything and now was the time for Joanna Bourke and I. I was about half way through her "The Story of Pain" when I picked it up again a few weeks ago and this team it felt like I flew through it. The book is thoroughly researched yet it reads beautifully. I was especially interested in her chapter on religion, but the whole book brought together many interesting facets of pain and as a historian she was able to unearth and bring many fresh perspectives that haven't appeared in other books on pain. This isn't an easy read, but if you're looking for new ideas on pain and the social constructions of pain this is a good place to start.
February 1, 2019
This is no doubt a fascinating book for someone who is interested in this field. For me, it was a rare case of just not being interested enough. It seemed to be taking a long time to get round to anything, and I bailed after getting quite a bit of the way through it. I think I'd been hoping for something more scientific. I have it marked as a 3-star read for what I did get into.
December 18, 2019
I thought I would be able to better rationalise pain, but it is painfully confusing and messy to do so. A book that fully unravels how difficult it is to translate language to something practical, general and specific. Now I feel totally confused...
Great read, bit hard to frame as it takes on the subject of pain from so many directions.
Great read, bit hard to frame as it takes on the subject of pain from so many directions.
June 7, 2026
Once upon a time, physicians praised the "intermingled relational & mutual dependence existing between the mind & body" and their "exquisite harmony." Now, we are more likely to view this messy mingling as negative or problematic, such as how we use the term "psychosomatic" as an aspersion on those whose pain is supposedly "in their heads."
It's trends like these Joanna Bourke expertly tracks in this fascinating, intricately researched book. Her primary thesis is this: "... pain does not emerge naturally from physiological processes, but in negotiation with social worlds." This book is an excellent example of primary source surveys in service of a clear thesis. She draws from hundreds of documents across four centuries, from medical textbooks to novels to personal letters, and assembles the trends of how people talked about pain, all the while arguing that these patterns point to socially (and, crucially, linguistically) conditioned experience, expression, and alleviation of pain. Bourke also does an admirable job resisting moralizing and applying these findings to current dilemmas—something beyond the scope of this book and her field as a historian.
Pain is mediated through language and culture; the words and metaphors we use to describe it, alongside the mannerisms and tones of parents and physicians as they discuss and treat it, directly influence our experience of pain. I was utterly fascinated by the shift in metaphors used to describe pain, from the eighteenth-century (the earliest range of her exploration) depictions that focused around natural (pain compared to a wolf, lightning, etc.) and religious (hellfire, demons, etc.) images, to nineteenth- and twentieth-century images that were more military ("fighting" pain) and technological (electricity and railroads creating new metaphors, like envisioning pain along nerve "routes" or gears that "grate").
Another main point is the simultaneous alienation and communicability of pain. While each person's pain is impossible to ever be fully experienced by anyone else—and while pain "alienates sufferers from themselves" even—humans are remarkably adept at conveying it to others, Bourke argues: "... one of the defining aspects of pain is the extent to which it brings people together and bonds of community. Indeed, it is precisely because pain-communications are so effective that they elicit both strong negative and strong positive responses." She traces not only the words we use to convey our pain, but also how our non-verbal gestures communicate and how that has changed over time.
Two of the other most interesting topics for me that Bourke explores are 1) the shift from doctors showing sympathy to becoming emotionally removed and detached; and 2) how anesthesia changed everything. The two are related, at least philosophically: If we technically can remove pain (albeit at other costs), should we always seek to do so? At what extent? Is that now the role of the doctor, to prescribe the right amount of painkillers, to alleviate pain as much as possible? What about a previous conception that "it was the duty of physicians and surgeons to bolster the courage of patients" in the face of inescapable pain? Sympathy made sense when pain was considered an inescapable part of life that doctor and patient alike would suffer, when the physician could not always (or even not usually) alleviate pain. But as the body became seen as a machine that could be broken down into parts to fix individually, doctors moved away from offering relational, emotional, and even spiritual support to focus on their siloed areas of mechanical expertise.
Bourke left me with a conundrum: I do not think this mechanical model honors our full humanity or helps us flourish. But I also resist some of the religious meaning-making of pain in past centuries that she records—the understanding of pain and disease as punishments or trials from God that must be endured stoically for eternal rewards. How do we treat the whole, interconnected person—body, mind, spirit—without assigning blame or divine motives where there are none (and where doing so can cause more suffering)? Interestingly, as her final chapter on pain relief shows, the purely biological model of treating pain as a physical problem to be fixed is not actually making people happier or healthier. This is where I think theology has a valuable role to play: It can help correct the errors and extremes of past conceptions of pain as connected to God and morality while still providing holistic meaning to suffering that a mechanical, materialist model cannot do.
One bonus thought: The move to lists of adjectives to describe pain (burning, shooting, etc.), in service of faster diagnosis, as contrasted with past methods that let patients describe their experience with varied metaphors and narratives (which, yes, are often confusing and unwieldy) is fascinating! I'd love to do more digging here about the need for skill in narrating our experiences and survey the rich array of ways people think and speak of their conditions. This is also where art is so important ... but that's a topic for another day.
It's trends like these Joanna Bourke expertly tracks in this fascinating, intricately researched book. Her primary thesis is this: "... pain does not emerge naturally from physiological processes, but in negotiation with social worlds." This book is an excellent example of primary source surveys in service of a clear thesis. She draws from hundreds of documents across four centuries, from medical textbooks to novels to personal letters, and assembles the trends of how people talked about pain, all the while arguing that these patterns point to socially (and, crucially, linguistically) conditioned experience, expression, and alleviation of pain. Bourke also does an admirable job resisting moralizing and applying these findings to current dilemmas—something beyond the scope of this book and her field as a historian.
Pain is mediated through language and culture; the words and metaphors we use to describe it, alongside the mannerisms and tones of parents and physicians as they discuss and treat it, directly influence our experience of pain. I was utterly fascinated by the shift in metaphors used to describe pain, from the eighteenth-century (the earliest range of her exploration) depictions that focused around natural (pain compared to a wolf, lightning, etc.) and religious (hellfire, demons, etc.) images, to nineteenth- and twentieth-century images that were more military ("fighting" pain) and technological (electricity and railroads creating new metaphors, like envisioning pain along nerve "routes" or gears that "grate").
Another main point is the simultaneous alienation and communicability of pain. While each person's pain is impossible to ever be fully experienced by anyone else—and while pain "alienates sufferers from themselves" even—humans are remarkably adept at conveying it to others, Bourke argues: "... one of the defining aspects of pain is the extent to which it brings people together and bonds of community. Indeed, it is precisely because pain-communications are so effective that they elicit both strong negative and strong positive responses." She traces not only the words we use to convey our pain, but also how our non-verbal gestures communicate and how that has changed over time.
Two of the other most interesting topics for me that Bourke explores are 1) the shift from doctors showing sympathy to becoming emotionally removed and detached; and 2) how anesthesia changed everything. The two are related, at least philosophically: If we technically can remove pain (albeit at other costs), should we always seek to do so? At what extent? Is that now the role of the doctor, to prescribe the right amount of painkillers, to alleviate pain as much as possible? What about a previous conception that "it was the duty of physicians and surgeons to bolster the courage of patients" in the face of inescapable pain? Sympathy made sense when pain was considered an inescapable part of life that doctor and patient alike would suffer, when the physician could not always (or even not usually) alleviate pain. But as the body became seen as a machine that could be broken down into parts to fix individually, doctors moved away from offering relational, emotional, and even spiritual support to focus on their siloed areas of mechanical expertise.
Bourke left me with a conundrum: I do not think this mechanical model honors our full humanity or helps us flourish. But I also resist some of the religious meaning-making of pain in past centuries that she records—the understanding of pain and disease as punishments or trials from God that must be endured stoically for eternal rewards. How do we treat the whole, interconnected person—body, mind, spirit—without assigning blame or divine motives where there are none (and where doing so can cause more suffering)? Interestingly, as her final chapter on pain relief shows, the purely biological model of treating pain as a physical problem to be fixed is not actually making people happier or healthier. This is where I think theology has a valuable role to play: It can help correct the errors and extremes of past conceptions of pain as connected to God and morality while still providing holistic meaning to suffering that a mechanical, materialist model cannot do.
One bonus thought: The move to lists of adjectives to describe pain (burning, shooting, etc.), in service of faster diagnosis, as contrasted with past methods that let patients describe their experience with varied metaphors and narratives (which, yes, are often confusing and unwieldy) is fascinating! I'd love to do more digging here about the need for skill in narrating our experiences and survey the rich array of ways people think and speak of their conditions. This is also where art is so important ... but that's a topic for another day.
July 12, 2025
Libro letto per preparare la tesi e che ho trovato abbastanza interessante, malgrado qualche capitolo un po' a vuoto.
Premetto dicendo che mi aspettavo una struttura diversa, più storiografica, mentre invece ogni capitolo contiene un tema diverso legato al dolore e come questo si è evoluto da un tempo non meglio precisato, più o meno nell'età moderna, fino ai giorni nostri.
La struttura è quella tipica del saggio americano, con la tesi ripetuta all'inizio e alla fine di ogni capitolo e un'enorme quantità di citazioni dirette. Sul lungo periodo risultano un po'ridondanti. Il tema trattato è comunque interessante, e anche se non ho apprezzato alcuni capitoli ho comunque trovato sempre a fuoco l'argomento centrale, per cui il dolore non si subisce ma si costruisce.
Ci sono moltissimi fatti, curiosità che possono soddisfare il lettore meno esigente a livello teorico ma più interessato alla quotidianità dei nostri avi. Lo stile si mantiene sempre chiaro, anche se la scorrevolezza del testo è parzialmente minata, come detto prima, dalle continue citazioni.
Premetto dicendo che mi aspettavo una struttura diversa, più storiografica, mentre invece ogni capitolo contiene un tema diverso legato al dolore e come questo si è evoluto da un tempo non meglio precisato, più o meno nell'età moderna, fino ai giorni nostri.
La struttura è quella tipica del saggio americano, con la tesi ripetuta all'inizio e alla fine di ogni capitolo e un'enorme quantità di citazioni dirette. Sul lungo periodo risultano un po'ridondanti. Il tema trattato è comunque interessante, e anche se non ho apprezzato alcuni capitoli ho comunque trovato sempre a fuoco l'argomento centrale, per cui il dolore non si subisce ma si costruisce.
Ci sono moltissimi fatti, curiosità che possono soddisfare il lettore meno esigente a livello teorico ma più interessato alla quotidianità dei nostri avi. Lo stile si mantiene sempre chiaro, anche se la scorrevolezza del testo è parzialmente minata, come detto prima, dalle continue citazioni.
August 7, 2017
Πρόκειται για μια καλή ιστορική ανασκόπηση του πόνου μέσα στους αιώνες. Ωστόσο, το βιβλίο έχει κάποιες σοβαρές ελλείψεις, όπως:
- Στο κεφάλαιο "Pain Creates Communities", η αναφορά γίνεται αποκλειστικά και μόνο στη θρησκεία.
- Στο κεφάλαιο για τη μετάδοση των αισθημάτων μεταξύ των ανθρώπων, παραλείπει σχεδόν τελείως τη συμβολή της γραφής και των βιβλίων.
- Το κεφάλαιο "Gestural Languages of Animals" είναι ελλιπέστατο.
- Στο κεφάλαιο "Pain Creates Communities", η αναφορά γίνεται αποκλειστικά και μόνο στη θρησκεία.
- Στο κεφάλαιο για τη μετάδοση των αισθημάτων μεταξύ των ανθρώπων, παραλείπει σχεδόν τελείως τη συμβολή της γραφής και των βιβλίων.
- Το κεφάλαιο "Gestural Languages of Animals" είναι ελλιπέστατο.
August 25, 2021
Ağrıyı tanımlama, ağrı üzerine düşünme, ağrının sosyal sonuçları, ağrıyla başa çıkma vs gibi mevzularla alakalı bir bakış açısı kattı. (Okurken kitapta anlatılanın aksine coğunlukla manevî ağrıları düşündüğümü itiraf edebilirim.) Fakat bununla birlikte çeviri olduğu için mi, akademik bir kitap olduğu için mi yoksa zor günlerde, sıkışık zamanlarda okuduğum için mi bilmiyorum biraz ağır geldi, zor ilerledi. Yarıda bırakmayı düşünerek güçlükle bitirdim diyebilirim.
November 6, 2018
Dry as a bone. Hard work.
May 31, 2019
Good if you're into the history of pain as it was documented in previous times, but very dry otherwise.
August 23, 2014
This turned out to be a bit dull....I was hoping for a bit more zing in what could have been a medical history lesson with some punch. The author, Joanna Bourke, is a professor of history at the University of London. Everyone has suffered pain from a scraped knee as a child up to arthritis, cancer and other disease as they age. Humans suffer bullet wounds in war and broken limbs in car accidents. This book attempts to analyze the why of pain, the how of pain, and the methods of controlling pain (prayer, painkillers, or plain old true grit). The book covers crude methods of pain control dating back to the 18th century up to modern day pills and potions. What the book offered in facts and academic thought is spot on but, I felt it lacked a close relationship to the human condition of suffering. Lots of old illustrations dot the book which are interesting in and of themselves.
August 14, 2016
This book is full of information from centuries ago up to the present discussing pain and the different forms and how people overcome pain. The author talks about the different types of pain from the actual physical form of pain in your body. To the emotional kind of pain like losing a loved one. Both can be very debilitating. Pain has been something people have been trying to overcome for centuries and the author goes into some of thoughts methods. The author also talks about the use of pain killers and how they are useful but also could led to addiction. A very interesting book and a lot of research went into this book. At times a little dry, but overall a good book. I got this book from netgalley. I gave it 4 stars. Follow us at www.1rad-readerreviews.com
October 2, 2014
This is a very interesting and often angering book reviewing the history of how pain has been defined, ignored, and sometimes treated. I recommend it for anyone living with pain personally, that has a loved one living with pain, and especially those working with people in pain. There was so much in this book that I want to research further.
January 2, 2015
More history than theory, but the history's well documented and informs theoretical thinking wonderfully. A superb read, even if this isn't in your main circle of scholarship or interest.
If you're interested in the history of medicine, the body or in healthcare, read this book immediately.
If you're interested in the history of medicine, the body or in healthcare, read this book immediately.
September 21, 2014
This is a fascinating account of the shift from theological to scientific explanations of pain. There is a good balance between theoretical concerns and illustrative anecdotes.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews