Bioethics and pain: which is Medicine's role in comforting?

There are different types of pain, and the various civil institutions are forms with which mankind combats pain. Unlike those who believe western civilisation to be in decline because it is no longer able to give a meaning to pain and distinguish its “saving value”, the author observes that medicine is gradually making available new institutions to fight pain. This task is of fundamental importance for civil progress, on a par with that of important scientific discoveries.