Paradoxes of Pain

Abstract

During the Crimean War (1854–1856), a young Russian officer, Count Leo Tolstoy, was on duty in the besieged town of Sevastopol. He had already begun his literary career and, with a view to writing a book about the war, made careful notes of everything he observed. One day, he visited the emergency hospital in the Sevastopol Assembly Hall. In his book Sevastopol Sketches, Tolstoy records this conversation:

“Where are you wounded?” you inquire hesitantly and timidly of a gaunt old soldier. . .

“In the leg,” he answers; but you notice from the folds of his blanket that one of his legs has been amputated up to the thigh. “I’m all right now, thank God,” he adds. “I’m waiting for my discharge.”

“Were you wounded long ago?”

“Nigh on six weeks ago, your honor.”

“Well, does it hurt now?”

“No, it doesn’t hurt any more. It’s all right. Only, I feel as if my calf aches when the weather’s bad; otherwise it’s all right.”

“How did you come to be wounded?”

“It was in Bastion Five, your honor, during the first bombardment. I had trained my gun and was just going to the next embrasure, when he hit me in the leg. I felt as if I had tumbled down a hole. I looked and found my leg was gone.”