A taxonomy of pain

301

Dear Sir,

A taxonomy ofpain . . . . . . . . . ) Drs. Loeser and Black recognise the relevance lea of pain. Unfortunately, their hierarchical ~wances in ordering our concepts of the matter° that pain represents private data, not accessible to the observer, only to the sufferer. Noordenbos 4 pointed out that it was wrong to say that a man does not 'feel the pain' when he is stimulated in an anaesthetic area. By the nd of of [ch cal erceived input (why not themselves perceptions?), is to set up a hierarchy which is not homogeneous. Perhaps I might add that the presentation of this hierarchy tends to suggest that pains which do not have a recognised or supposed physioloNcal basis are described in a way different to those which do have a physiological basis. Devine and Merskey ~ have shown that such a view is often misleading, since the words which patients use to describe pains of psycho!ogical origin contain the notion of no×iov_s inpat just as mac ords which patients use who have physical causes for their pain.

Os

H. MERSKEY The National Hospital Queen Square London W C 1 N 3BG (Great Britain)

1975)

REFERENCES

I Devine, R., andMerskey, ~., The description of pain in psychiatric and general medical patients, .7. psTchosom, ges., 9 (1965) 31 !. ......... d Illness, D.M. Thesis, Oxford, 1964. a~d Psychiatric Aspects, Bailliere~ TindMI and 1957.