Yet, the possibility of life without pain is not farfetched. But think a moment. What does that scripture really mean? There are people today who have no sense of pain. They are born without it. Are they to be envied? Anatomist Allan Basbaum said: “Not to have pain at all is a disaster.”

If you were unable to feel pain, you would probably not notice that you had developed a blister until it became a badly ulcerated sore. According to a news report, the parents of one little girl who felt no pain “would sometimes smell burning flesh and find her casually leaning against the stove.” Thus, pain is more than a cruel enemy. It can also be a blessing.

Efforts to Understand Pain

Pain is still not fully understood. “The eternal allure of trying to puzzle out what pain is,” said American Health magazine, “has scientists working intensely.” A few decades ago, they assumed that pain was a form of sensation, like sight, hearing, and touch, that is felt by special nerve endings in the skin and is transmitted through particular nerve fibers to the brain. But this simplistic concept of pain was found to be untrue. How?

One factor that led to the new insight was the study of a young woman who had no sense of pain. Following her death in 1955, an examination of her brain and nervous system led to a whole new concept of the cause of pain. Doctors “looked for the nerve endings,” explained The Star Weekly Magazine, July 30, 1960. “If [she] didn’t have any, that would account for the girl’s insensitivity. But they were present and apparently perfect.

“Next, the doctors examined the nerve fibers supposed to connect the nerve endings with the brain. Here, surely, a defect would be found. But it wasn’t. The fibers were all perfect, as far as could be seen, aside from those degenerated due to injury.

“Finally, examinations were made of the girl’s brain and, once more, no defect of any kind could be established. According to all existing knowledge and theory, this girl should have felt pain normally, yet she couldn’t even feel tickling.” She was, however, sensitive to pressure when applied to the skin and could distinguish between the touch of a pin head and a pin point, although the pricking of the pin did not hurt.

Ronald Melzack, who in the 1960’s coauthored a popular new theory to explain pain, provides another example of its complexity. He explained: “Mrs. Hull kept pointing to her foot that wasn’t there [it had been amputated], and describing burning pains that felt like a red-​hot poker being pushed through her toes.” Melzack told Maclean’s magazine in 1989 that he was “still looking for explanations of what he calls ‘phantom’ pain.” In addition, there is what is called referred pain, in which a person may have a malfunction in one part of the body but feel the pain in another.

Both Mind and Body Involved

Pain is now identified as “an extremely complex interaction of the mind and the body.” In her 1992 book Pain in America, Mary S. Sheridan says that “the experience of pain is so heavily psychological that the mind can sometimes deny its existence and sometimes create and sustain it long after an acute injury is gone.”

One’s mood, concentration, personality, susceptibility to suggestion, and other factors are all important in how one responds to pain. “Fear and anxiety cause an exaggerated response,” noted pain authority Dr. Bonica. Thus, one may learn to sense pain. Dr. Wilbert Fordyce, a professor of psychology who specializes in problems of pain, explains:

“The question is not whether the pain is real. Of course it is real. The question is what are the crucial factors which influence it. If I talk with you just before dinner about a ham sandwich, you salivate. It is very real. But it occurs because of conditioning. There’s no ham sandwich there. Human beings are exquisitely sensitive to conditioning. It influences social behavior, salivating, blood pressure, the speed of digesting food, pain, all sorts of things.”

Just as your emotions and frame of mind can intensify pain, they can suppress or dull it. Consider an example: A neurosurgeon said that as a youth he was once so enamored of a girl while sitting with her on an icy wall that he felt no sensation of severe cold or pain in his rump. “I was almost frostbitten,” he explained. “We must have been sitting there for 45 minutes, and I didn’t feel a thing.”

Such examples are manifold. Football players involved deeply in the game or soldiers in the heat of battle may be badly injured and yet feel little or no pain at the time. The famous African explorer David Livingstone told of being attacked by a lion that shook him “as a terrier does a rat. The shock . . . caused a sort of dreaminess in which there was no sense of pain.”

It is noteworthy that servants of Jehovah God, who calmly look to him with complete confidence and reliance, have also at times had the experience of their pain being suppressed. “Strange as it might seem,” reported a Christian who was beaten, “after the first few blows, I really didn’t feel them anymore. Instead, it was as if I could only hear them, like the beating of a drum off in the distance.”​—February 22, 1994, Awake!, page 21.