Personal injury

“ He assumes that the injury, which results from a sacrifice of the truth for the good of the sick, comes upon him who practices the deception, and that in doing it, “he generously relinquishes every consideration referable only to himself.” But the considerations that I have presented show, that the injury is very far from being thus confined. Often the very person intended to be benefited is injured, perhaps deeply, in some cases even fatally. ”

“ The injury that is problematic, or general, or that falls in undefined ways upon unknown persons, is resented feebly, or not at all. The fiend who should rack his victim with torments such as typhoid inflicts would be torn to pieces. ”

“ I refer to the pain produced in the body by injury, as in cutting, tearing, concussion, compression, pinching, the stresses and strains produced by inflammation, the lesions of disease, and all the pains known as physical discomforts. Is the pain in the tooth a quality or a property? Is pain in the head a quality or a property? Is the pain from a bullet wound a quality or a property? We have already seen that all other pleasures and pains are derivative in the individual and in the race, and appear from the point of view. Is this true of physical pain? ”

“ We commonly understand by it any kind of harm done by one man to another; but we do not define the idea of [Pg 286] harm; sometimes we limit it to the harm which the sufferer is conscious of, whereas much the worst injuries are those he is unconscious of; and, at other times, we limit the idea to violence, or restraint, whereas much the worse forms of injury are to be accomplished by carelessness, and the withdrawal of restraint. ”

“ If there is any man amongst you whom I have injured, I desire of him most earnestly to tell me the wrong I have done, that I may repair it before I die. I am quite certain that I have never done any one an intentional injury ”

“ We know not to what degree of malignity any injury is to be imputed; or how much its guilt, if we were to inspect the mind of him that committed it, would be extenuated by mistake, precipitance, or negligence; we cannot be certain how much more we feel than was intended to be inflicted, or how much we increase the mischief to ourselves by voluntary aggravations. We may charge to design the effects of accident; we may think the blow violent only because we have made ourselves delicate and tender; we are on every side in danger of errour and of guilt ”

“ The PRACTICE of forgiving injuries. The terms employed indicate clearly enough that the injuries which man suffers from his fellow are trifling in amount, especially in comparison of each man’s guilt in the sight of God. There is a meaning in the vast and startling difference between ten thousand talents and a hundred pence. Even when the injury is the greatest that human beings are capable of inflicting on the one side, and enduring on the other; even when an enemy has killed the body and ceased then, because he has no more that he can do, it is still a measurable thing. ”

“ The condition is always very serious, and complete precautions as to the possibility of fatal termination should be taken, as soon as consciousness is regained after the blow, in any case where the head injury has been severe enough to cause more than a momentary loss of self-possession. ”

“ Some of the lexicographers define an "injury" to be "hurt, harm, or mischief, unjustly done to a person," thereby implying that any hurt, harm, or mischief done to one who deserves nothing better, or can be considered as justly liable to it, is no injury at all. I reject entirely every such qualification of the term. I hold an injury to be an injury, whether deserved or undeserved, whether intended or unintended, whether well meant or ill meant, determining the fact in accordance with the foregoing definition. ”

“ Where injury occurs and is followed by moral degradation everyone pities and condones; who can tell how many criminals are suffering from brain-lesions, causing injuries as serious, though without external sign, as those caused by the crowbar or the knife? ”

“ These bodily changes are so much like those which occur in pain and fierce struggle that, as early writers on evolution suggested, the emotions may be considered as foreshadowing the suffering and intensity of actual strife. On this general basis, therefore, the bodily alterations attending violent emotional states would, as organic preparations for fighting and possible injury, naturally involve the effects which pain itself would produce. ”

“ Definitions.—Surgically a wound means a solution of continuity and refers to every such lesion produced by external violence or developing spontaneously. The medico-legal acceptation of the term is much broader and includes any injury or lesion caused by mechanical or chemical means. Vibert [601] quotes Foderé as defining a wound medico-legally as, “Every lesion of the human body by a violent cause of which the results are, singly or combined, concussion, contusion, puncture, incision, tear, burn, twist, fracture, luxation, etc. ”

“ It will, it is believed, be found, upon examination of the authorities, that wherever substantial mental suffering would be the natural and probable result of the act, there compensation for injury to feelings has been allowed, and that where no mental suffering would ordinarily result, or if resulting, would naturally be but trifling,and,being unaccompanied by visible signs of injury,would afford a wide scope for imaginative ills, there damages have been disallowed. ”

“ Yet others, with deep, gaping wounds, in which inflammation had already set in, were delirious from their pain, and implored that they might be put out of their misery, and with drawn faces twisted themselves into indescribable positions in their supreme agony. ”

“ but there are some cases, and his was one of them, in which the sense of injury breeds—not the will to inflict injuries and climb over them as a ladder, but, a hatred of all injury. ”

“ The claim is urgent in behalf of the unfortunate individual, whose life is a perpetual series of suffering and anxiety, who is not only subjected, perhaps, every six or eight months to the debilitating effect of excessive hemorrhage, but whose mind is oppressed by disappointment, arising out of domestic and conjugal relationships, even more heavily than by the influence of personal suffering. ”

“ If this is done well the sick person learns how to get out of their own body's way and permit its native healing power to manifest. Unless later the victim of severe traumatic injury, never again will that person need obscenely expensive medical procedures. ”

“ Here in her thirteenth year she is just recovering from the first terrible effects of an injury inflicted by her master, who in an ungovernable fit of rage threw a heavy weight at the unoffending child, breaking in her skull, and causing a pressure upon her brain, from which in her old age she is suffering still. ”

“ A weary and harassing thing it is even where the body is the aggressor—when the fevered blood, darting like liquid fire through the veins, mounts to the throbbing brow, and, pressing like molten lead upon the brain, crushes out thought and feeling, leaving but a dull consciousness of the racking agony which renders each limb a separate instrument of torture. ”

“ However, that every objective permanent injury results in substantial loss of a bodily function does not follow. An easy example is a completely healed fracture without any objective evidence of permanent substantial impairment. ”

“ The argument on both sides has proceeded on the basis of earlier authorities that bodily harm means any hurt or injury that is calculated to or does interfere with the health or comfort of the subject but must be more than transient or trifling, that grievous bodily harm means really serious bodily harm and that wounding involves the breaking of the whole skin. Common assault would include any physical touching which did not fall within these categories. ”

“ Suppose a surgeon said to a man who appeared before him with a scalp wound received through falling on the kerb while under the influence of drink, “You have been foolish and wicked, since you have made yourself intoxicated and lost control of your senses. Your head is wounded, and it is only a chance that you have not been killed. You have disgraced yourself in the eyes of those among your friends who have any sense of respectability, and you have run the risk of losing your employment as the result of your intemperance. ”

“ In injuries to the person, those marks which denote injuries regarded by mankind in general as differing in magnitude; the size, for example, or position, of a wound; in injuries to reputation, the words used, and the occasion when, and so forth, are the only means of distinction which can be employed. ”

“ Have they ever, even in thought, put themselves in the place of the criminal, when the heavy knife falls, bites into the flesh, grinds through the nerves and shivers the vertebræ? But all pain is over in half a second. ”

“ So if I see a man wounded, and this sight occasions in me a painful feeling of sympathy, I do not in this case feel for myself, because between that idea or object impressed on my mind and the painful feeling which follows, there is no such positive connection as there is between the infliction of the same wound on my own body, and the physical pain which follows it. ”

“ That is to say, suppose the æthereal body capable of receiving an injury, an injury in one part of it would correspond to an injury in a man’s past; an injury in another part,—that which the material body was traversing,—would correspond to an injury to the man at the present moment; injury to the æthereal body at another part, would correspond to injury coming to the man at some future time. ”

“ We conceive in a much more lively and distinct manner the pain which proceeds from an external cause, than we do that which arises from an internal disorder. I can scarce form an idea of the agonies of my neighbour when he is tortured with the gout, or the stone; but I have the clearest conception of what he must suffer from an incision, a wound, or a fracture. The chief cause, however, why such objects produce such violent effects upon us, is their novelty. ”

“ Self-inflicted wounds are made by the person himself in order to divert suspicion, or in order to bring accusation against another. Such wounds are always in front, not over vital organs, and superficial in character. ”

“ In anger the eyes are fiery and the pupils contracted; in modesty the cheeks are suffused with blushes; in fear, and under a sense of infamy and of shame, the face is pale, but the ears burn as if for the evil they heard or were to hear; in lust how quickly is the member distended with blood and erected! But, above all, and this is of the highest interest to the medical practitioner,—how speedily is pain relieved or removed by the detraction of blood, the application of cupping-glasses, or the compression of the artery which leads to a part? ”

“ If one must suffer, he may assuage his pain by bearing it bravely. The over-tending of a wound may produce worst consequences. Exposure to the air, frequent ablutions, occasional frictions, create healing processes, reduce sensitiveness, and restore somewhat of the old life and vigor. ”

“ Relief in Severe Injuries.—Even extremely severe injuries, which inflict serious organic lesions that ordinarily would produce shock and collapse, quite apart from the pain induced, may at moments of excitement pass unnoticed. A soldier often does not know that he is wounded until the flow of blood calls his attention to it, or perhaps a friend points it out to him, or loss of blood causes him to faint. ”

“ Bodily pain, if severe, is generally brutalizing, at least for most people, and the moral insight is in it only in so far as the past experience of bodily pain helps us to know the significance of the suffering of others, not by giving us that blind emotion of sympathy before criticised, but by giving us the means to form a cool abstract estimate of the value of this evil of physical pain. ”

“ If another break my arm by violence, this will not certainly give him additional health or strength; if he stun me by a blow or inflict torture on my limbs, it is I who feel the pain, and not he; and it is hard if I, who am the sufferer, am not allowed to be the judge. ”

“ It is now generally recognised that pain, or anything that lowers vitality, operates injuriously and retards the recovery of patients; and every means is taken to prevent suffering, not because it makes the patient feel bad, but because it causes him to be bad. ”

“ Let us suppose that a human body is wounded—that is, cut or torn by some outside agency. The tissues, lymphatic and blood vessels, glands, muscles, nerves, and sometimes even the bone, is severed, and the continuity interrupted. The wound bleeds, gapes and causes pain. The nerves carry the message to the brain, calling loudly for immediate help, and the Instinctive Mind sends messages here and there in the body, calling out a sufficient force of repair workmen, who are hurried to the scene of danger. ”

“ I said, “tell our host we’ve got to get Alex dry and warm. If you don’t I’ll undress her and rub her right here!”
I would have said more, but I couldn’t. A pain like a knife stabbed through my lungs, and before I could catch my breath stabbed neatly again. It’s the kind of pain you can’t describe; if you’ve felt it you know it, and if you haven’t, you can’t. I recognized it; it had struck me years before and laid me in a hospital for six weeks. Pneumonia!
There’s a kind of clan morality that controls us. ”

“ Dragging with her one woman who was paralysed with fright, she induced the others to follow her, and when they were out of the line of fire, proceeded to examine the terrific wounds from which one and all declared themselves to be suffering. ”

“ The entire absence of shock or pain of any kind whatsoever, is always an agreeable surprise to those who, urged by their physicians, have with fear and trembling submitted themselves to a treatment, the mere name of which filled their minds with extravagant—and, it is useless to say, groundless—visions of painful shocks. ”