Warning!
	This article contains information regarding Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, and thus may contain spoilers.

Pain was a feeling felt by most life forms, most often a nervous system response caused by damaging stimuli. Pain could also be emotional, like pain caused by grief or remorse.

Physiology

There were various ways to subjectively describe the sensation of pain. For example, in 2372, The Doctor asked a pregnant Samantha Wildman to describe the nature of her pain, listing several possibilites: "Burning, throbbing, piercing, pinching, biting, stinging, shooting". (VOY: "Tattoo")

At Starfleet Academy, it was taught that there were four specific types of pain - nociceptive, inflammatory, neuropathic, and psychogenic.

• Nociceptive pain was the most common form of pain, caused by tissue and nerve damage.

• Inflammatory pain was caused by bodily reactions causing the release of inflammatory mediators.

• Neuropathic pain was caused by nerves sending incorrect or altered signals.

• Psychogenic pain was created in the mind, and felt in the body, despite no physical damage occurring.

(SA: "Kids These Days")

For most Betazoids born with their telepathic abilities switched on, the noise of other peoples' thoughts and feelings were overwhelming, incomprehensible, and painful, especially to a child. (TNG: "Tin Man")

Vulcans were capable of mentally suppressing certain levels of physical pain. Beyond this, they had no choice but to endure it. (VOY: "Resistance")

Examples

During his interrogation of Captain Jonathan Archer in June 2151, the Andorian Commander Thy'lek Shran suggested that Archer must enjoy pain. (ENT: "The Andorian Incident")

In 2152, Doctor Phlox's treatment of Malcolm Reed's impaled foot caused him great pain. Reed stated that it could not be ethical, but Phlox replied that while it was unethical to harm a patient, he could inflict as much pain as he liked. (ENT: "Dead Stop")

One of the symptoms of the life prolongation project virus was great pain in the extremities. (TOS: "Miri")

Victims of Kodos the Executioner's massacre of 2246 died quickly without pain. (TOS: "The Conscience of the King")

In 2287, Leonard McCoy claimed that Sybok took away his pain, but James T. Kirk noted that as McCoy was a doctor, he knew that pain and guilt couldn't be taken away with the wave of a magic wand. They were things people carried with them; what made them who they were. If they lost them, they lost themselves. Kirk didn't want his pain taken away because he needed it. (Star Trek V: The Final Frontier)

The Vulcan nerve pinch was a pain-inducing technique most commonly carried out by Vulcans, or the select few who had mastered it. (TNG: "Starship Mine")

One of the symptoms of the phage was excruciating joint pain, so much so that some patients died from the pain alone. (VOY: "Faces")

The Emergency Medical Holographic program was not programmed to feel pain. As such, The Doctor was confused when he experienced it during a hallucination in 2371 in which he was not sure whether he was actually an EMH or the Human named Lewis Zimmerman. (VOY: "Projections") In 2373, when The Doctor's program was captured by Henry Starling, Starling demanded Captain Kathryn Janeway's psychological profile. The Doctor refused, countering that Starling had no means of coercing him, and Starling tapped a button, proving that he had reprogrammed him to feel pain, then further tortured him with a burning sensation. (VOY: "Future's End, Part II")

External link

• Pain at Wikipedia