Chloroform may suppress memory of pain without reducing its felt intensity

Evidence

My scruples are founded on the simple fact that operations with chloroform, and presumably also with the other known forms of narcosis, have an illusory success. These substances act solely on certain motor and coordination centers and on the residual capability of the nervous substances. Under the influence of chloroform, the nervous substance loses a considerable part of its ability to absorb traces of impressions, but it does not lose the power of sensation as such. On the contrary, my observations suggest that in conjunction with the general innervation paralysis, pain is experienced even more strongly than in the normal condition. The public is misled by the fact that after an operation the patient is unable to remember what he has undergone. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 210

Categorization

• QUESTION: A 19th-century physiologist’s claim that anesthesia amplifies rather than dulls pain — worth checking against modern anesthesia research.
• XREF: The dissociation of memory from experience echoes Amnesia and the culture-industry theme of forgetting one’s own suffering; also resonates with the ‘false pleasure’ critique of administered pleasure. — connects to: Absorbed activity makes pain present yet un-noticed until reflection.
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Absorbed activity makes pain present yet un-noticed until reflection.

Broader Connections

• Absorbed activity makes pain present yet un-noticed until reflection. #corroborates (0.78)