An immersive reading of experts from Michel de Montaigne’s essay ‘Of Experience’ reflecting on his suffering from kidney stones with an exploration of the themes of reframing suffering, the historical treatment of kidney stones and illness narratives.
Passage:
When it assaults me gently, I am afraid, for ‘tis then for a great while; but it has, naturally, brisk and vigorous excesses; it claws me to purpose for a day or two. […] Thou art seen to sweat with pain, to turn pale and red, to tremble, to vomit blood, to suffer strange contractions and convulsions, at times to let great tears drop from thine eyes, to urine thick, black, and dreadful water, or to have it suppressed by some sharp and craggy stone, that cruelly pricks and tears the neck of the bladder
[…] But is there anything delightful in comparison of this sudden change, when from an excessive pain, I come, by the voiding of a stone, to recover, as by a flash of lightning, the beautiful light of health, so free and full, as it happens in our sudden and sharpest colics? […] As the Stoics say that vices are profitably introduced to give value to and to set off virtue, we can, with better reason and less temerity of conjecture, say that nature has given us pain for the honour and service of pleasure and indolence.
[…] I moreover observe this particular convenience in it, that it is a disease wherein we have little to guess at: we are dispensed from the trouble into which other diseases throw us by the uncertainty of their causes, conditions, and progress; a trouble that is infinitely painful: we have no need of consultations and doctoral interpretations; the senses well enough inform us both what it is and where it is. […] Now if I feel anything stirring, do not fancy that I trouble myself to consult my pulse or my urine, thereby to put myself upon some annoying prevention; I shall soon enough feel the pain, without making it more and longer by the disease of fear. He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears.
[…] There are none but fools who suffer themselves to be persuaded that this hard and massive body which is baked in our kidneys is to be dissolved by drinks; wherefore, when it is once stirred, there is nothing to be done but to give it passage. […] We ought to grant free passage to diseases; I find they stay less with me, who let them alone; and I have lost some, reputed the most tenacious and obstinate, by their own decay, without help and without art, and contrary to its rules. Let us a little permit Nature to take her own way; she better understands her own affairs than we.
Full essay:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3600/3600-h/3600-h.htm The Essays of Michel de Montaigne, Complete. Translated by Charles Cotton, edited by William Carew Hazlitt. Guttenberg project. Accessed 8.6.21
References:
Shah J, Whitfield HN. Urolithiasis through the ages. BJU Int. 2002 May;89(8):801-10.
Fioretti C, Mazzocco K, Riva S, Oliveri S, Masiero M, Pravettoni G. Research studies on patients' illness experience using the Narrative Medicine approach: a systematic review. BMJ Open. 2016 Jul 14;6(7):e011220.
