• Domenico Santoro, Guido Bellinghieri, and Vincenzo Savica.
• Unit of Nephrology and Dialysis, Department of Medicine and Pharmacology, University of Messina, Messina, Italy. dsantoro@unime.it
• J. Nephrol. 2011 May 1; 24 Suppl 17: S133-6.

AbstractFrom Hippocratic medicine through the modern theory of Melzack and Wall, the concept and physiopathology of pain has been developed over the course of time, assuming in some instances a religious or philosophical view and in others a more scientific meaning. People have developed very different words to express pain. The Arabic language has hundreds of words to express pain, while European languages are more limited. Descartes, who first proposed a link between peripheral sensation and the brain, suggested that sensations stimulated in the body are conveyed directly to the brain, where they are actually perceived. The Cartesian model gave rise to the notion of a "hard-wired system." European physicians did their best to relieve their patients' pain, often through the judicious use of opium and, after 1680, laudanum, the mixture of opium in sherry introduced by Thomas Sydenham. In 1803, Sertürner discovered a substance from isolated crystals of a powerful analgesic agent, derived from crude opium, that he named morphine, after Morpheus, the Greek god of dreams. The introduction of surgical anesthesia represented one of the most important advances of modern medicine, although initially it was not accepted by the medical community, for ethical reasons.

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