Samantha Murphy, contributor
PAIN remains one of the most slippery concepts in physiology. We all experience it, but it is nearly impossible to define in any complete way. That's because measuring it objectively or testing for it is nearly impossible. If you'll forgive the comparison, one could argue that we are closer to "operationalising" love than pain.
In Understanding Pain, Fernando Cervero, professor of anaesthesia at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, gives a remarkably lively tour of what we do know. Although the book is heavily rooted in neuroscience research, Cervero provides a rich and historical backdrop, and layers his explanations with colourful metaphors and relatable examples.
He also tours through all that we still don't understand, including exactly what pain is and why it occurs. There are several different types of pain that appear to have different origins, functions and mechanisms. Sometimes we experience "good pain", which has a protective element, "bad pain" as a consequence of injury or disease, or "chronic pain", which exists for no apparent reason.
How we measure pain is improving, but the best and most reliable method continues to be having sufferers score their own discomfort. Testing pain is a messy process and not for the weak of heart, and treating it is even trickier - it is difficult to target a drug if you cannot point to the offending issue in all cases.
Ongoing efforts to resolve these ambiguities are slowly helping to clarify the physiology of pain.
A recent shift in societal perception is good news for those who are suffering, Cervero says. That change in attitude, from a belief that individuals should suffer in silence to the idea that pain can and should be reported and treated, means it is now considered a "multidimensional disease" rather than solely a symptom. Bringing pain out of the shadows brings the hope of new treatments, a reduction in shame and critically important scientific knowledge.
"We are moving in the right direction," Cervero says. Pain may be part of the human condition, but it is not one that must be accepted.
Book information
Understanding Pain by Fernando Cervero
MIT Press
?17.95/$24.95
Marie Curie, the family woman
Andrew Robinson, contributor
BIOGRAPHIES of Marie Curie tend to neglect her last two decades or so and concentrate on her scientific career up to the isolation of radium, for which she won her second Nobel prize in 1911. But, though scientifically less fruitful, her later years were in many ways the most eventful of her life.
In Marie Curie and Her Daughters, Shelley Emling focuses on this later era in the great scientist's life. It included a controversial love affair with physicist Paul Langevin, a friendship with Albert Einstein, the establishment of the Radium Institute in Paris, her pioneering use of radiography on the French wounded in the first world war, her tours of the US to raise money to obtain radium for her institutes in Paris and Warsaw, and her relationships with her daughters, scientist Ir?ne Joliot-Curie and writer Eve Curie.
Science is not the strength of this book. Pierre Curie's vital contribution and personality are rendered almost invisible, and Emling says little about the discovery of radioactivity by Henri Becquerel and the Curies in the 1890s - and botches the references she does make to the Curies' legendary preparation of radium between 1899 and 1902.
Still, the book works well at a more personal level and inspires fresh admiration for Marie Curie's dedication to science, ethics and individuals, particularly her two daughters. After working closely with her mother, Ir?ne went on to win a Nobel prize for her work on artificial radioactivity in 1935, in collaboration with her own husband. Eve wrote a biography of her mother, Madame Curie, which was a worldwide bestseller in the 1930s and was adapted to make a Hollywood feature film in 1943.
Perhaps the most surprising part of the book, though, is to see how Curie's welcome in the US in 1921 - by universities, companies and public figures including US president Warren Harding - enabled her to shake off her dread of the spotlight. Wisely or not, Marie and Pierre always refused on principle to patent any of their techniques, and so their radium institutes were long deprived of resources. By her 1929 US tour, she used her fame to help raise funds for her institutes' research.
Yet as this latest biography makes clear, it never went to her head. As Einstein once remarked, "Marie Curie is, of all celebrated beings, the only one whom fame has not corrupted."
Book information
Marie Curie and Her Daughters: The private lives of science's first family by Shelley Emling
Palgrave Macmillan
?16.99/$26
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