The Subtitle may seem to suggest that religious approaches to coping with pain have been superseded by the resources of modern pharmacology. In fact, Joanna Bourke has no particular axe to grind against religion. Her position is that of an impartial historian of ideas. The Story of Pain is a meticulously researched survey of all manner of comments, anecdotes, pronouncements and theories about pain and its management, from physicians, theologians, psychologists, philosophers, and, most harrowingly, from the sufferers themselves. As the story progresses from the early modern period through to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and up to the present, the overall effect of the rich array of quotations and sources assembled here is to make us profoundly grateful that the march of science h