| Abstract: | Reviews the book, Textbook of pain by Patrick D. Wall and Ronald Melzack (1984). A clinical specialty has come of age when it is represented by a textbook of this stature. Wall and Melzack's 79-chapter Textbook of Pain attempts, as Noordenbos describes in his prologue, to represent the state of the art today, to be a guideline on how to tackle the subject, and finally, to prescribe how to act in a given situation. As a textbook, it also must accomplish these goals through chapters that are accessible to readers at less advanced levels or working in different disciplines. In this instance, the difficulty of the textbook creators' task is compounded by the nature of the specialty of studying and treating pain. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
