As stated by John J Bonica, the founding father of pain medicine, in 1953, pain “in its late phases, when it becomes intractable, it no longer serves a useful purpose and then becomes, through its mental and physical effects, a destructive force”.
1 Nevertheless, it is only with the discovery of abnormal pains that the phenomenon and its role start to be directly addressed in medicine, that is, when traditional interpretation of pain as a symptom of disease starts to weaken. An important step forward in the scientific characterization of pain has been taken with the Sherrington’s definition of the phenomenon as “the psychical adjunct of an imperative, protective reflex” and the description of its neurophysiological aspects. Pain has a valuable role in medical action, as the symptom par excellence and, therefore, as a precious and meaningful tool. The attempt to understand pain represents one of the oldest challenges in the history of medicine.
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