Note 30 — Chapter II · MORAL PAIN.

Hahnemann distinguished 73 kinds of physical pain, Georget 38, Renaudin 12, etc. I give these numbers as curiosities. More recently Goldscheider (Ueber den Schmerz) establishes three stages in physical pain: (1) true, real (echte) pains; they depend on the nerves of special sensibility, and are caused by mechanical, thermal, or chemical stimulations, by inflammation and poisons; (2) indirect pains, pseudo-pains, which consist especially in a state of discomfort (Schmerzweh); in the case of the head, stomach, etc., they may be as oppressive and cause as much torture as “real” pains; (3) psychic or ideal (ideel) pains, which are a hyperæsthesia of the sensitive activity; they are met with in neuroses (neurasthenia, hysteria, hypochondria), in hallucinations, the hypnotic state, etc. This classification is perhaps acceptable in physiology. For psychology, every pain, in virtue of being a fact of consciousness, is “true” and “real.”