A major problem confronting virtually all clinicians is that of helping people who are in pain. A major problem for all of us is that many of the ailments and accidents that will be inflicted on us during our lives, especially towards the later stages, will cause us pain. Pain is an intractable problem. All pain is subjective – one health psychologist rattling through the McGill Pain Questionnaire will come up with objective‐looking results that will differ quite markedly from another plodding conscientiously through the Brief Pain Inventory with the same patient. Objective measures using methods such as functional neuroimaging have, so far, been of only limited value.
Secondly, however much philosophers may try to cling to it, the concept of mind‐body dualism has to be abandoned. All pain is “all in the mind” and all pain consists of a combination of organic and psychosocial factors, so all therapeutic approaches to pain need to consider both organic and psychosocial remedies. Research collaboration between staff of my own institution and those from the Kings College School of Dentistry across the road has amply borne this out.
There are numerous books on the subject of pain, ranging from the enormous and forbiddingly scientific Wall and Melzeck's Textbook of Pain (McMahon and Kaltzenberg, 2006) – a regular cause of lower back pain for library shelving staff over the years, all the way round to the slim and user‐orientated, such as Taking Control of Your Pain (Battison, 2005). This excellent little book is a very worthy addition to the clinician's armoury. I should emphasise the word “clinicians” here. The densely packed text, crammed with references to scientific journals, and, inevitably, using complex technical terms from medical, psychological and scientific fields, means that this book is not really suitable for the general reader. Public libraries looking at its title should bear in mind that “concise” does not mean “simplified”. It seems to me however, that all medical or nursing libraries, and all academic libraries catering for courses in health psychology, advanced nursing, etc. should seriously consider acquiring copies.
In a recent issue of Reference Reviews (Vol. 19 No. 7) Bob Duckett in his article “Chomps and Yomps: Chads and Spads; which dictionary?” raised the problem of whether libraries should shelve subject dictionaries and encyclopedias with books on the subject, or with other dictionaries. I am undecided on the general principle, but this particular little encyclopedia is so closely integrated with its subject that it seems to me to belong on the open shelves, next to Wall and Melzeck's Textbook of Pain.
