Seeing Pain: From Hippocrates to the 21st Century

Date: 17 February 2011
Time: 4:30 - 6:00pm (Light refreshments will be provided at 4:15pm.)
Venue: Exhibition Area, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, Sassoon Road

Seeing Pain: From Hippocrates to the 21st Century by Sander L Gilman (Distinguished Professor of the Liberal Arts and Sciences; Professor of Psychiatry, Emory University and Visiting Research Professor of European Studies, The University of Hong Kong )

Abstract:
seminar poster How is pain to be assessed? Can pain be measured? Who judges pain? Is pain a mental or a physical phenomenon? Or are there any ways of distinguishing the causes or location or nature of pain?

Pain is one of the most difficult categories in medicine. Hippocrates wrestled with its meanings but only after the 18th century does the question of its "nature" become a means by which the complex inner relationship of the body and the mind are explored. In the 21st century the question of "seeing pain," one which Greek medicine thought it had answered, has reappeared as a litmus test for the very nature of the medical project. The history of seeing pain will be examined with an eye towards the claims and pitfalls of diagnosis in medicine, including in psychiatry.

The event was co-hosted by:
Centre for the Humanities and Medicine and the Department of Psychiatry

For further enquiries, please contact Dr Barbara Dalle Pezze.