Session 9: Pain in History

1st Global Conference

Wednesday 17th February – Friday 19th February 2010
The Women’s College, Sydney, Australia

in association with the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of New South Wales, Sydney

An Uncertain Anodyne: Making Sense of Pain through Mesmerism in the Nineteenth Century
Elizabeth Todd
Department of History, University of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Mesmerism is often examined as a therapeutic or mystical agent, but in the nineteenth century mesmerism also enjoyed significant popularity as a surgical and dental anaesthetic agent.

In the mid-nineteenth century the application of mesmerism for pain relief in dental and surgical procedures problematized understandings of the mechanism, function and meaning of pain. These questions were confronted even more aggressively with the introduction of inhalation anaesthetics, such as ether in 1846 and chloroform in 1847. Such questions included: Was it acceptable or desirable to remove pain in a medical procedure? What functions did pain serve? Did some patients suffer pain more acutely than others? Was mesmerism an effective anodyne? Were some patient’s more susceptible to the benefits of mesmerism than others?

Mesmerism was not immediately superseded by the new inhalation anaesthetics. James Esdaile in India and John Elliotson in London practiced and published widely on the subject into the 1850s. In Australia, a mesmeric practitioner Newman Waterworth, travelled the east coast in the 1890s where he mesmerised patients undergoing dental procedures in Hobart, Sydney and Brisbane.

There was considerable disbelief in both the medical and lay communities regarding the efficacy of mesmerism as an anodyne. Elliotson was accused of colluding with patients in his public demonstrations to make it appear that the patient felt no pain from the surgeon’s knife. There was further debate among the medical community as to whether mesmerism could be regarded as a medical technique, or should be relegated to the realm of quackery.

This paper will explore mesmerism before and during the era of the inhalation-anaesthetic; the reception and rejection of mesmerism inside and outside the medical community in the nineteenth century; and the circumstances behind the re-emergence of mesmerism as the pain-relief method-of-choice for some Australians facing dental extractions in the 1890s.

Download Draft Conference Paper (pdf)

A Suffering Woman in Catholic Literature
Therese Taylor and Mary O’Connell

Department of History, Charles Stuart University, Australia and Writer, Sydney, Australia

This paper will give two accounts of women’s lives which were defined and described by their experiences of pain. The first is a consideration of Eileen O’Connor, an early 20th century Australian woman mystic, who experienced severe disability and a lengthy terminal illness. The second paper goes back to 17th century France, and looks at the detailed and emotive accounts of the death of Anne of Austria, the Queen Mother who died in 1666 from breast cancer.

Therese Taylor and Mary O’Connell will give separate but comparative presentations which consider the representational possibilities of pain in Catholic interpretations of life. The ways in which women’s experiences of pain were documented will be described, and the questions arising concerning romanticisation, exploitation and distancing will be put up for discussion.

These papers take an historical approach, and are based on research into primary sources.

Taranaki born, Sydney based Mary O’Connell is a writer and historian of spiritual cultures. Her research areas have included Hildegard of Bingen, Omar Khayyam, the Brigid and Mary stories in Gaelic cultures, the spiritual uses of suffering, and the persistence of Marianism in masculinist cultures. Her latest book Our Lady of Coogee: Eileen O’Connor and the founding of Sydney’s Brown Nurses was published in August 2009 by Crossing Press.

Therese Taylor teaches late modern history at Charles Sturt University, Australia. She is the author of a scholarly biography of a French saint, Bernadette of Lourdes, Her Life, Death and Visions (London 2003). She has published articles on the history of terminal illness, and representations of women saints.