Pain Ii: Whose Business is It?
Mettler, F.A.
Journal of the Medical Society of New Jersey 61: 62-64
1964
ISSN/ISBN: 0025-7524 PMID: 14123907 Document Number: 9537
Pain is an experience which can be erected on an extremely variable terrain. It can shift its ground and can call for a variety of auxiliary reactions. The physician cannot cope with pain unless he realizes all this. The ground on which pain can pitch its tent may be in any of several provinces of the specialties. Often, therefore, it is not easily dealt with by a particular specialist. The general practitioner seldom has time to hold fast to a pain problem (while pain goes through its usual protean changes). It is therefore not often successfully treated in general practice. In spite of these difficulties it is preferable for the general practitioner to try to analyze fully any pain problems which he encounters. If the patient is referred to the wrong type of specialist, not only may a long, expensive, fruitless round be initiated, but the global aspects of the problem may become obscured.
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