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Pain is often seen as universal and timeless, but how have people’s understandings of pain changed over time? Did the invention of more effective analgesics and anaesthetics really revolutionise medical practices and human relationships to suffering? 

Pain forces sufferers to ‘pay attention’ to their bodies. The way people-in-pain communicate their suffering has a profound effect on the type and quality of care they receive.

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This event was on Wed, 11 Oct 2017

Joanna Bourke

Professor Joanna Bourke

Professor of Rhetoric

Professor Bourke is Professor of Rhetoric at Gresham College.

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