VARIATIONS IN CUTANEOUS AND VISCERAL PAIN SENSITIVITY IN NORMAL SUBJECTS 1

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Abstract
Two hundred normal subjects of various races and ages have been tested for cutaneous pain sensitivity by a modification of the heat-radiation apparatus of Hardy, Wolff, and Goodell. Twenty-nine of the subjects were also tested for visceral sensitivity by balloon distention of the lower esophagus. Considerable variation in pain-perception and pain-reaction was found. Pain sensitivity decreased with age. A group of Negroes had a lower pain-perception threshold than a comparable group of Northern Europeans, and reacted more readily than the Northern Europeans to the pain stimulus. The subjects whose racial origin was from the Mediterranean littoral had both pain-perception and pain-reaction values only slightly above those noted in the Negroes. Of various modifying factors, only mental fatigue and nervous tension produced any significant changes in cutaneous pain sensitivity. The results of the tests estimating visceral sensitivity corresponded in the main to those obtained by cutaneous stimulation. The magnitude of individual threshold variations in pain-perception and pain-reaction encountered in these studies is believed to be of real clinical significance, outside the limits of error of the method and of individual variations.