Reflecting careful planning, an imposing list of contributors immediately prepares the reader for an authoritative and fresh look at a multifaceted subject, pain. Few symposia have produced as much information.
Forty-one papers are grouped by subject into six sections. The opening section deals with anatomical substrata for pain perception. Among other papers, an anatomico-clinical study of 74 cordotomies by Nathan and Smith will particularly interest surgeons. Contributors to the next section, parameters of pain and analgesia, consider narcotic and non-narcotic analgesics—their site and mode of action, their assay in animals and in man, their use in the control of pain, and determination of drug dependence and dependence liability.
A separate section concerns operative techniques for the relief of pain arising in the body. Noordenbos ascribes recurrence of pain after cordotomy to a multisynaptic afferent system for pain conduction. Advocates of thoracic, high cervical, and percutaneous cordotomy discuss each procedure and