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Updated: June 27, 2025
If pain is a part of a muscular response and occurs only as a result of contact ceptor stimulation by physical injury, infection, anemia, or obstruction, we may well inquire which part of the nerve mechanism is the site of the phenomenon of pain. Is it the nerve-ending, the nerve-trunk, or the brain?
Body of a nerve-cell of the spinal cord, specially stained so as to show the minute structure. A large nerve-cell from the spinal cord of the ox, magnified 175 diameters. Representation of the manner in which a nerve is seen to terminate in a muscle, such ending being one form of "nerve-ending" termed a "muscle plate."
For each of these diversified pains the consequent muscular action is specific in type, distribution, and intensity. This statement is so commonplace that we are apt to miss the significance and the wonder of it. It is probable that every nerve-ending in the skin and every type of stimulation represents a separate motor pattern, the adequate stimulation of which causes always the same response.
As a whole, it may be considered a peculiar form of nerve-ending. The external ear forms only a part of a most elaborate apparatus whereby sound waves may be transmitted inwards to the real organ of hearing. The really sensitive part of the ear, in which the auditory nerve ends, is buried for protection deep out of sight in the bones of the head; so deep that sounds cannot directly affect it.
Usually nerve-fibres make connection with the cells of an organ by a special modification of structure known as a nerve-ending. Nearly all central impulses, we now know, arise because of the peripheral ones. One may illustrate this important relation by a telegraph system.
The essential mechanism used by Nature to give us the sensation of sound consists of a complicated form of nerve-ending; an auditory nerve leading from, and a continuation, in a certain sense, of, the latter; nerve tracts and hearing centres in the brain. The whole constitutes a very complicated mechanism, but the principles on which it is constructed may be reduced to a few.
That is, is pain associated with the physical contact with the nerve-ending, or with the physical act of transmission along the nerve-trunk, or with the change of brain-cell substance by means of which the motor-producing energy is released? We postulate that the pain is associated with the discharge of energy from the brain-cells.
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