There is a groan that unites men and women, rich and poor, in any nation. These muscle pains are "explained" in every culture, but the universal fact of this persistence must mean that no adequate therapy exists.

Even the clearest localization of pain in one area may, in fact, be originating from a distant area .... The reference of pain implies the existence of convergence of inputs within the spinal cord. This leads to the necessary involvement in central neural circuits in the simplest of peripheral disorders. It also leads to the possibility that the basic disorder is entirely central.

There is a groan that unites men and women, rich and poor, in any nation. These muscle pains are "explained" in every culture, but the universal fact of this persistence must mean that no adequate therapy exists.

The labeling of nociceptors as pain fibers was not an admirable simplification, but an unfortunate trivialization under the guise of simplification.

Hopefully we are emerging from an era of fantasy explanations for real phenomena. The authors certainly have to face a community of therapists who are obsessionally committed to explanations for disease and for therapy unsupported by a scrap of evidence except for their claimed therapeutic success.