A few years ago, my mom developed rheumatoid arthritis.
几年前，我母亲得了类风湿性关节炎。
Her wrists, knees and toes swelled up, causing crippling, chronic pain.
她肿起的手腕，膝盖和脚趾，让她长久以来痛苦不堪。
She had to file for disability. She stopped attending our local mosque.
她不得不去申请残障证。她不再去我们当地的清真寺参加活动。
Some mornings it was too painful for her to brush her teeth.
有些早晨她甚至疼得无法刷牙。
I wanted to help. But I didn't know how. I'm not a doctor.
我想帮助她，但却感到束手无策。我并不是医生。
So, what I am is a historian of medicine. So I started to research the history of chronic pain.
我只是一个医药历史学者。于是我开始研究慢性疼痛的历史。
Turns out, UCLA has an entire history of pain collection in their archives.
我发现加州大学洛杉矶分校的档案里收藏了关于疼痛的完整历史记录。
And I found a story -- a fantastic story -- of a man who saved -- rescued -- millions of people from pain; people like my mom.
从中我找到了一则奇妙的故事--关于一个男人如何将数百万人从疼痛中拯救出来的故事；那些和我母亲一样的人。
Yet, I had never heard of him. There were no biographies of him, no Hollywood movies.
然而，我从来没有听说过他。没有关于他的传记或好莱坞电影。
His name was John J. Bonica.But when our story begins, he was better known as Johnny "Bull" Walker.
他名叫约翰·J·博尼卡，不过在这个故事刚开始的时候，他常常被人称作约翰尼·“斗牛士”·沃克。
It was a summer day in 1941. The circus had just arrived in the tiny town of Brookfield, New York.
那是1941年的一个夏日。一个马戏团刚刚来到纽约的布鲁克菲尔德镇上。
Spectators flocked to see the wire-walkers, the tramp clowns -- if they were lucky, the human cannonball.
观众蜂拥而至来看走钢丝表演和小丑--如果运气够好，还能看到人体炮弹。
They also came to see the strongman, Johnny "Bull" Walker, a brawny bully who'd pin you for a dollar.
他们还想见见大力士约翰尼·“斗牛士”·沃克，只花1块钱，就可以跟他一较高下。
You know, on that particular day, a voice rang out over the circus P.A. system.
可在那一天，马戏团的广播中传来了一个声音。
They needed a doctor urgently, in the live animal tent. Something had gone wrong with the lion tamer.
他们在动物蓬急需一名医生。驯兽师出事了。
The climax of his act had gone wrong, and his head was stuck inside the lion's mouth.
他在表演进行到最精彩的时候发生了意外，他的头卡在了狮子嘴里。
He was running out of air; the crowd watched in horror as he struggled and then passed out.
他快要窒息了；观众惊恐地看着他。他挣扎了一阵，昏了过去。
When the lion finally did relax its jaws, the lion tamer just slumped to the ground, motionless.
当狮子终于张开嘴巴的时候，驯兽师瘫倒在地上，一动不动。
When he came to a few minutes later, he saw a familiar figure hunched over him. It was Bull Walker.
几分钟后，当他醒来，他看到了一张熟悉的面孔。那是“斗牛士”沃克。
The strongman had given the lion tamer mouth-to-mouth, and saved his life.
这位大力士通过人工呼吸挽救了驯兽师的生命。
Now, the strongman hadn't told anyone, but he was actually a third-year medical student.
大力士从没有跟任何人提起过，他其实是医学院的三年级学生。
He toured with the circus during summers to pay tuition, but kept it a secret to protect his persona.
他通过暑假跟着马戏团巡游来赚钱付学费，却为了维护角色形象而绝口不提此事。
He was supposed to be a brute, a villain -- not a nerdy do-gooder.
他想让大家认为自己是一位土霸，恶棍--而不是勤奋好学的书呆子。
His medical colleagues didn't know his secret, either.
他在医学院的同事也不知道他的秘密。
As he put it, "If you were an athlete, you were a dumb dodo."
正如他所说，“如果你是个运动员，理所应当就是个笨蛋。”
So he didn't tell them about the circus, or about how he wrestled professionally on evenings and weekends.
因此他没有透露任何关于马戏团以及在傍晚和周末参加职业摔跤的事情。
He used a pseudonym like Bull Walker, or later, the Masked Marvel.
他用艺名“斗牛士”沃克，后来还用过“蒙面奇侠”。
He even kept it a secret that same year, when he was crowned the Light Heavyweight Champion of the world.
即便在他得到世界摔跤轻重量级冠军的那一年，他仍然保守着这个秘密。
Over the years, John J. Bonica lived these parallel lives.
约翰·J·博尼卡过了数年这样的双面生活。
He was a wrestler; he was a doctor. He was a heel; he was a hero. He inflicted pain, and he treated it.
他是摔跤手；也是医生。他是混蛋，也是英雄。他给别人带来痛苦，也能治疗疼痛。
And he didn't know it at the time, but over the next five decades,
他当时还不知道，在未来的五十年里，
he'd draw on these dueling identities to forge a whole new way to think about pain.
他会利用这两个不同的角色来创造一个对待疼痛的全新观念。
It'd change modern medicine so much so, that decades later,
这种观念将为现代医学带来巨大的改变, 多年后，
Time magazine would call him pain relief's founding father. But that all happened later.
时代杂志会称其为“止痛之父”。但那都是后话了。
In 1942, Bonica graduated medical school and married Emma, his sweetheart, whom he had met at one of his matches years before.
1942年，博尼卡从医学院毕业，迎娶了艾玛，他们几年前在他的一场比赛中相识。
He still wrestled in secret -- he had to. His internship at New York's St. Vincent's Hospital paid nothing.
他仍然偷偷地从事职业摔跤--他别无选择。因为他在纽约圣文森特医院实习期间没有任何收入。
With his championship belt, he wrestled in big-ticket venues, like Madison Square Garden, against big-time opponents,
带着他的冠军金腰带，他不断参加大型的摔跤比赛，像在麦迪逊广场花园，面对的都是大牌对手，
like Everett "The Blonde Bear" Marshall, or three-time world champion, Angelo Savoldi.
比如埃弗里特·“金发熊”·马歇尔，或是荣获三次世界冠军的安杰洛·萨沃尔迪。
The matches took a toll on his body; he tore hip joints, fractured ribs.
摔跤比赛严重地影响了他的身体状况；他损伤过腰关节，断过肋骨。
One night, The Terrible Turk's big toe scratched a scar like Capone's down the side of his face.
一天晚上，“凶悍土耳其人”的大脚指在他脸上划出了一道像卡彭一样的伤疤。
The next morning at work, he had to wear a surgical mask to hide it.
第二天早晨去上班时，他只能带着医用口罩来遮掩伤势。
Twice Bonica showed up to the O.R. with one eye so bruised, he couldn't see out of it.
有两次，博尼卡出现在护士室的时候，一只眼睛是青肿的，完全看不见东西。
But worst of all were his mangled cauliflower ears.
然而最糟糕的还是他那破损的菜花耳。
He said they felt like two baseballs on the sides of his head. Pain just kept accumulating in his life.
他说感觉就像头旁边挂了两个棒球。生活中的疼痛始终有增无减。
Next, he watched his wife go into labor at his hospital. She heaved and pushed, clearly in anguish.
接着，他看着老婆在自己的医院分娩。她挣扎着，明显承受着巨大的痛苦。
Her obstetrician called out to the intern on duty to give her a few drops of ether to ease her pain.
产科医生叫来了值班的实习生，要给她几滴醚来缓解疼痛。
But the intern was a young guy, just three weeks on the job -- he was jittery, and in applying the ether, irritated Emma's throat.
但那位实习生很年轻，才实习了三个星期--他战战兢兢地进行麻醉时，不小心刺激到了艾玛的喉咙。
She vomited and choked, and started to turn blue.
她开始呕吐，呼吸困难，面色开始发青。
Bonica, who was watching all this, pushed the intern out of the way, cleared her airway, and saved his wife and his unborn daughter.
在一旁看着的博尼卡把实习生推开，清理了她的呼吸道，拯救了自己的妻子和未出生女儿的命。
At that moment, he decided to devote his life to anesthesiology.
从那一刻起，他决定致力于麻醉科。
Later, he'd even go on to help develop the epidural, for delivering mothers.
后来，他甚至为帮助分娩的母亲而发明了硬膜外麻醉术。
But before he could focus on obstetrics, Bonica had to report for basic training.
但在他可以完全转行妇产科之前，博尼卡必须完成他的基本培训。
Right around D-Day, Bonica showed up to Madigan Army Medical Center, near Tacoma.
在诺曼底登陆日前后，博尼卡出现在了塔科马附近的马迪根陆军医疗中心。
At 7,700 beds, it was one of the largest army hospitals in America.
那是美国最大的军事医院之一，有7700张病床。
Bonica was in charge of all pain control there. He was only 27.
那里所有的止痛工作都由博尼卡负责。他当时只有二十七岁。

Treating so many patients, Bonica started noticing cases that contradicted everything he had learned.
接触过大量病人以后，博尼卡开始注意到，一些案例完全有悖于之前所学的知识。
Pain was supposed to be a kind of alarm bell -- in a good way -- a body's way of signaling an injury, like a broken arm.
疼痛本应该是一种有益的警钟，是身体在受伤的情况下发出信号的一种方式，例如骨折的时候。
But in some cases, like after a patient had a leg amputated, that patient might still complain of pain in that nonexistent leg.
但在某些案例里，比如一个病人刚做了腿部截肢后，可能还会感觉到本不该存在的腿部疼痛。
But if the injury had been treated, why would the alarm bell keep ringing?
如果伤口已经被处理过了，怎么还会警钟长鸣呢？
There were other cases in which there was no evidence of an injury whatsoever, and yet, still the patient hurt.
有些案例里没有任何受伤的迹象，但是，这些病人仍然很痛苦。
Bonica tracked down all the specialists at his hospital -- surgeons, neurologists, psychiatrists, others.
博尼卡跟踪观察了医院里的所有医生--外科医生、神经科医生、精神病医生等等。
And he tried to get their opinions on his patients.
他想问一下这些医生对他的病人的看法。
It took too long, so he started organizing group meetings over lunch.
为了节省时间，他开始在午餐时间组织会议。
It would be like a tag team of specialists going up against the patient's pain.
其间很多专业人士会一起讨论病人的疼痛症状。
No one had ever focused on pain this way before. After that, he hit the books.
之前从来没有人如此重视过疼痛。在这之后，他开始查阅资料。
He read every medical textbook he could get his hands on, carefully noting every mention of the word "pain."
他读了所有能拿到的医学资料，仔细标记了所有提到“疼痛”二字的地方。
Out of the 14,000 pages he read, the word "pain" was on 17 and a half of them. Seventeen and a half.
在他读过的14000页内容中，“疼痛”只在十七页半中出现。十七页半。
For the most basic, most common, most frustrating part of being a patient.
这是作为一个病人最基本、最常见却也最令人无奈的地方。
Bonica was shocked -- I'm quoting him, he said, "What the hell kind of conclusion can you come to there?
博尼卡被震惊了--他的原话是这么说的，他说，“就这点信息，你能得出什么结论呢？
The most important thing from the patient's perspective, they don't talk about."
在病人眼中最重要的事情，他们（医生）从来不在乎。”
So over the next eight years, Bonica would talk about it.
在接下来的八年里，博尼卡对此重视起来。
He'd write about it; he'd write those missing pages.
他写了关于疼痛的书；他要补全那些缺失的内容。
He wrote what would later be known as the Bible of Pain.
他写了后来被人誉为“疼痛圣经”的书。
In it he proposed new strategies, new treatments using nerve-block injections.
在书中他提出的了新的方法，用神经抑制注射来缓解疼痛。
He proposed a new institution, the Pain Clinic, based on those lunchtime meetings.
他提倡建立一个新的机构，“疼痛诊所”，这个想法来源于之前的午餐会议。
But the most important thing about his book was that it was kind of an emotional alarm bell for medicine.
但是关于这本书最重要的事情是，它是一个医学警钟。
A desperate plea to doctors to take pain seriously in patients' lives. He recast the very purpose of medicine.
一个希望医生能够更加关注病人疼痛症状的迫切意愿。他重新定义了医学的宗旨。
The goal wasn't to make patients better; it was to make patients feel better.
目标并不仅仅是让病人康复，而是减少病人在这个过程中遭受的痛苦。
He pushed his pain agenda for decades, before it finally took hold in the mid-'70s.
他几十年来一直在推行自己的疼痛计划，直到70年代中期。
Hundreds of pain clinics sprung up all over the world.
那时候，已有几百家疼痛诊所在世界各地开放。
But as they did -- a tragic twist. Bonica's years of wrestling caught up to him.
但是，一个悲伤的转折出现了，博尼卡数年摔跤生涯的后果显露出来了。
He had been out of the ring for over 20 years, but those 1,500 professional bouts had left a mark on his body.
他已经20多年不摔跤了，但1500名职业摔交手还是在他身上留下了难以磨灭印记。
Still in his mid-50s, he suffered severe osteoarthritis.
50多岁的时候，他就备受骨关节炎的折磨。
Over the next 20 years he'd have 22 surgeries, including four spine operations, and hip replacement after hip replacement.
在接下来的20多年里，他经历了22个手术，包括4个脊椎手术，一次又一次的髋骨替换。
He could barely raise his arm, turn his neck. He needed aluminum crutches to walk.
他几乎不能抬起手臂或者转头。他需要铝支架来帮助他行走。
His friends and former students became his doctors.
他的朋友和校友成了他的医生。
One recalled that he probably had more nerve-block injections than anyone else on the planet.
一个医生说，他也许经历过比这个星球上任何其他人都要多的神经抑制注射。
Already a workaholic, he worked even more -- 15- to 18-hour days.
他已经是一个工作狂了，却还要变本加厉--每天工作15-18个小时。
Healing others became more than just his job, it was his own most effective form of relief.
治愈别人对他来说不仅仅是工作，对他自己来说也是一种解脱。
"If I wasn't as busy as I am," he told a reporter at the time, "I would be a completely disabled guy."
他曾跟一位记者这么说，“如果我没有这么忙，我可能早就是个残废了。”
On a business trip to Florida in the early 1980s, Bonica got a former student to drive him to the Hyde Park area in Tampa.
1980年初，在去弗罗里达出差的路上，博尼卡让一位校友把他送到坦帕的海德公园。
They drove past palm trees and pulled up to an old mansion, with giant silver howitzer cannons hidden in the garage.
他们穿过许多棕榈树，在一所老别墅前停下，车库里藏着巨大的银色榴弹加农炮。
The house belonged to the Zacchini family, who were something like American circus royalty.
这房子属于萨奇尼家族，一个类似美国皇家马戏团的家族。
Decades earlier, Bonica had watched them, clad in silver jumpsuits and goggles, doing the act they pioneered -- the Human Cannonball.
几十年前，博尼卡曾见过他们穿着银色的表演服和护目镜，进行着他们的拿手表演：人肉炮弹。
But now they were like him: retired.
但是他们现在跟他一样：退休了。
That generation is all dead now, including Bonica, so there's no way to know exactly what they said that day.
那一代人已经逝去了，包括博尼卡，所以没有人知道当时他们说了些什么。
But still, I love imagining it. The strongman and the human cannonballs reunited, showing off old scars, and new ones.
但是我依然忍不住要去想象。“大力士”和“人肉炮弹”重聚了，展示彼此的旧伤新疤。
Maybe Bonica gave them medical advice. Maybe he told them what he later said in an oral history,
也许博尼卡会给他们医疗建议。也许他会把之后在口述历史中的内容告诉他们，
which is that his time in the circus and wrestling deeply molded his life.
那段在马戏团摔跤的时光造就了他现在的人生。
Bonica saw pain close up. He felt it. He lived it.
博尼卡近距离接触过疼痛。感受着、伴随着他一生的疼痛。
And it made it impossible for him to ignore in others.
而这使他无法无视别人的痛苦。
Out of that empathy, he spun a whole new field, played a major role in getting medicine to acknowledge pain in and of itself.
出于那种同情，他推动了一个新的领域，为研制针对缓解疼痛的药物做出了巨大贡献。
In that same oral history, Bonica claimed that pain is the most complex human experience.
在同一段口述历史中，博尼卡认为，疼痛是人类最复杂的经历。
That it involves your past life, your current life, your interactions, your family.
它包含了你过去的生活、你现在的生活、你的社会关系、你的家人。
That was definitely true for Bonica. But it was also true for my mom.
这一点对博尼卡而言毋庸置疑。 但同样也适用于我的母亲。
It's easy for doctors to see my mom as a kind of professional patient, a woman who just spends her days in waiting rooms.
医生们可以轻而易举地把我妈妈当成老病号来看待，她整天整天地呆在诊所的等候室。
Sometimes I get stuck seeing her that same way.
有时候我也不禁会这样想。
But as I saw Bonica's pain -- a testament to his fully lived life -- I started to remember all the things that my mom's pain holds.
但当我看到博尼卡的痛苦--作为他传奇一生的见证--我想起了我母亲所遭受的一切痛苦。
Before they got swollen and arthritic, my mom's fingers clacked away in the hospital H.R. department where she worked.
在她的手指患上关节炎、肿到无法工作之前，她一直在医院的人力资源部忙碌着。
They folded samosas for our entire mosque.
她用一双手为整个清真寺折过印度咖喱角。
When I was a kid, they cut my hair, wiped my nose, tied my shoes. Thank you.
当我还是孩子的时候，这双手为我剪过头发、为我擦过鼻子，还帮我系过鞋带。谢谢大家。