Rey, Roselyne, The History of Pain, translated by Louise Elliot Wallace, J.A. Cadden, and S.W. Cadden (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995).
必要があって、痛みの歴史の麻酔の部分を読む。麻酔が導入された1840年代後半には、それはまだ危険を伴う技術であったが、それは認められた。同じような議論は、人痘の導入期にも存在した。そのことをめぐって、科学技術のイノヴェーションに伴うリスクと政治を論じた部分である。
19c studies of Japanese and Chinese moxa. 139-141.
Hamphrey Davy on nitrous oxide: “a sensation alalogous to gentle pressure on all the muscles, attended by an highly pleasurable thrilling, particularly in the chest and the extremities. The objects around me became dazzling and my hearing more acute. Towards the last inspirations, the thrilling increased, the sense of muscular power became greater and, at last, an irresistible propensity of action was felt; I recollect but indistinctly what followed; I know that my motions were various and violent.” Davy admits that had he not made a note of his reactions straight after his experiment, he would not have believed what had happened since the next morning all that he retained was a very confused memory.” 145
Hamphrey Davy on nitrous oxide: “a sensation alalogous to gentle pressure on all the muscles, attended by an highly pleasurable thrilling, particularly in the chest and the extremities. The objects around me became dazzling and my hearing more acute. Towards the last inspirations, the thrilling increased, the sense of muscular power became greater and, at last, an irresistible propensity of action was felt; I recollect but indistinctly what followed; I know that my motions were various and violent.” Davy admits that had he not made a note of his reactions straight after his experiment, he would not have believed what had happened since the next morning all that he retained was a very confused memory.” 145
The generalized use of a new practice which did away with pain for the majority of patients was more important than the death of a few individuals, even if averything had to be done to get round the unforeseen and comply with contraindications… the majority prevails over the individual. 169
The nature of these arguments may remind us in certain respects of another famous debate in the eighteenth century, namely one concerning inoculation. This debate set the academic and philosopher d’Alembert against the majority of his colleagues within the enlightened encyclopedist movement: was it necessary to inoculate en masse against smallpox, with the minimum but potentially fatal risks which this could entain for those inoculated who might perhaps have never contracted it or who, one could even imagine, would have caught smallpox naturally, without any risk of dying? The alternative was to be against incoculation in order to avoid causing the premature albeint unpredictable deaths of some individuals, despite the fact that the majority of those inoculated would be protected against this illness and above all against the risk of its fatal consequences. 170
But managing the probable is a political act – in the full sense of the term – with legal consequences, which the academics of 1848 fully recognized and whose ethical demans were that the terms be put clearly. Malgaigne and the first users of ether and chloroform anaesthesia took the political decision to take a chance on surgery without pain and, by so doing, took upon themselves the risk of the odd fatal accident. It is only in retrospect that this gamble appeared to have been necessary and legitimate. 171
The ministers for Justice and Public Inquiry ordered the Academie not so much to present the alternatives and the degrees of probability attached to each choice, but to decree that chloroform was innocuous and allow it to be used. Thus governments, by turning towards scientists for security, delegated their political power and, by the very nature of the questions which they put to the scientists, gave them a role which they did not necessarity want to play. … Thus relationships were woven between scholar and the government in which the probabilistic and political nature of choices, which was of interest to everybody and should have been presented as such to the citizens, had been diluted by the creation of a convenient division of their roles. … These included refusal by the authorities to take the uncertainties of scientific research into the public domain because of all the criteria by which it would be judged and, as a natural consequence, the will to use science as an instrument of public order and legitimation. 171-2.
