Qualquer destas referências a assuntos históricos, têm muito interesse: a primeira, como Lincoln se relacionou, efectivamente, com a questão da raça; a segunda, como evolucionou a percepção social e médica do papel da dor no tratamento dos problemas de saúde:
- Lincoln's Black History - The New York Review of Books Abraham Lincoln was born into a racist family, in a racist region of our country, during a racist era of our history. It would have been amazing if he had not begun his life as a racist. Piety toward his memory suppressed that fact for generations. Most of us wanted Lincoln to be free of racism, and we read the evidence to arrive at that conclusion. No one wanted that more than blacks.
- Is Pain a Moral Good? - Freakonomics Blog - NYTimes.com e The day pain died: What really happened during the most famous moment in Boston medicine - The Boston Globe(o excerto é do segundo link)Before 1846, the vast majority of religious and medical opinion held that pain was inseparable from sensation in general, and thus from life itself. Though the idea of pain as necessary may seem primitive and brutal to us today, it lingers in certain corners of healthcare, such as obstetrics and childbirth, where epidurals and caesarean sections still carry the taint of moral opprobrium. In the early 19th century, doctors interested in the pain-relieving properties of ether and nitrous oxide were characterized as cranks and profiteers. The case against them was not merely practical, but moral: They were seen as seeking to exploit their patients' base and cowardly instincts. Furthermore, by whipping up the fear of operations, they were frightening others away from surgery and damaging public health. The "eureka moment" of anesthesia, like the seemingly sudden arrival of many new technologies, was not so much a moment of discovery as a moment of recognition: a tipping point when society decided that old attitudes needed to be overthrown. It was a social revolution as much as a medical one: a crucial breakthrough not only for modern medicine, but for modernity itself. It required not simply new science, but a radical change in how we saw ourselves.
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