Ronald Melzack

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Ronald Melzack

Born(1929-07-19)July 19, 1929
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
DiedDecember 22, 2019(2019-12-22) (aged 90)
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
NationalityCanadian
Alma materMcGill University
Occupation(s)Psychologist, Professor

Ronald Melzack

Wall & Melzack's Textbook of Pain
.

Melzack has received numerous honors including

Grawemeyer Award for his research on the science of pain.[3]

Early life

Melzack was born in Montreal, the son of Joseph Melzack, who worked in a clothing factory and opened a second-hand bookstore. He grew up in a working-class Jewish neighborhood.[4] Due to financial constraint, Ron was the only sibling in his family to attend university. His brothers worked in the family bookstore known as "Classic Bookshops" which became a successful chain. He received his M.Sc. from McGill in 1951 and his Ph.D. from McGill in 1954. Donald O. Hebb was Melzack's research advisor at university during the time he worked on his doctoral thesis. Hebb was doing experiments with dogs who had not been normally socialized and Melzack became interested in their unusual response to pain when they would stick their nose in a flame repeatedly.[5] Melzack completed his post-doc at the University of Oregon.[6]

Career

After studying for his Ph.D. in 1954 with Hebb at McGill University in Montreal, he began to work with patients who suffered from "phantom limb" pain — people who feel pain in an arm or leg that has been removed. He found that pain often has little survival value, and some pains are entirely out of proportion to the degree of tissue damage, sometimes continuing long after injured tissues have healed. While still a postdoctoral student, Melzack began collecting "pain words" and putting them into classes that belonged together, like "hot," "burning," "scalding," and "searing".

In 1975, this pursuit led to the development of the

University College of London, and the University of Pisa in Italy. He eventually became a faculty member at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he met Dr. Patrick Wall. The two shared similar thoughts and ideas surrounding the phenomenon of pain. Melzack and Wall noticed that some individuals felt immense pain when damage to the body was minimal, and some people with traumatic injuries experienced little or no pain until a later time.[8]

In 1965 at

endorphins and enkephalins, the body's natural opiates. He is also noted for work on stress-induced analgesia, phantom-limb pain and the theory of neuromatrix.[10] He proposes that we are born with a genetically determined neural network that generates the perception of the body, the sense of self, and can also generate chronic pain, even when no limbs are present.[5]

Melzack's recent research at McGill indicates that there are two types of pain, transmitted by two separate sets of pain-signaling pathways in the central nervous system. Sudden, short-term pain, such as the pain of cutting a finger, is transmitted by a group of pathways that Melzack calls the "lateral" system, because they pass through the

brain stem on one side of its central core. Prolonged pain, on the other hand, such as chronic back pain, is transmitted by the "medial" system, whose neurons
pass through the central core of the brain stem.

In 1974, Melzack co-founded the first pain clinic in Canada at the Montreal General Hospital with Dr. Joseph Stratford (then Chief of Neurosurgery at the hospital and who was the medical director of the pain clinic). Melzack served as Research Director from 1974 to 2000. The clinic became part of the McGill University Health Centre which has grown to be one of the best organized centres for pain treatment in the world. Melzack also supervised graduate students at McGill, one of whom —John O'Keefe— would later go on to receive the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2014.

Recognition

Melzack was a founding member of the

Canada Council Molson Prize
in 1985.

He received the Prix du Québec for research in pure and applied science (1994), recognizing him as a laureate of the highest honor for a scientist in his home province.

Grawemeyer Award in psychology for his studies and explanation of experiencing pain.[13] The International Association for the study of pain created the Ronald Melzack Lecture Award in 2010, in recognition of Melzack's exceptional contributions to the field of pain research.[14]
In 2011, he wrote the foreword of a Ronald Melzack special issue about the influence of the Melzack's works on understanding of pain and daily practice.[15] Melzack's published articles include; Pain mechanisms: A new theory, published in Science magazine in November 1965, The McGill Pain Questionnaire: Major properties and scoring methods published in the journal Pain, in 1975, and re-published by Melzack in the Journal Anesthesiology, in 2005 and Pain and the neuromatrix in the brain, published in the Journal of Dental Education, in 2001.[11]

References

  1. ^ "Remembering the life of Ronald Melzack 1929 - 2019". montrealgazette.remembering.ca. Retrieved Jan 8, 2021.
  2. ^ Carey, Benedict (Jan 12, 2020). "Ronald Melzack, Cartographer of Pain, Is Dead at 90". The New York Times. Retrieved Jan 8, 2021.
  3. ^ "Melzack, Stanovich win Grawemeyer awards". American Psychological Association. Retrieved 27 April 2014.
  4. ^ Gliserman, Michael (Nov 18, 2002). "Mastering the Pain". Maisonneuve. Retrieved Jan 8, 2021.
  5. ^ a b c "Dr. Ronald Melzack | www.cdnmedhall.org". Archived from the original on 2013-12-04. Retrieved 2013-12-02.
  6. ^ "The king of (understanding) pain". reporter.mcgill.ca. 17 November 2008. Retrieved 6 April 2022.
  7. S2CID 20562841
    .
  8. ^ [1][dead link]
  9. PMID 5320816
    .
  10. .
  11. ^ a b "Membre honoraire". Réseau québécois de recherche sur la douleur. Retrieved Jan 8, 2021.
  12. ^ "The King of (Understanding) Pain: Q&A with Ronald Melzack : headway". publications.mcgill.ca. Archived from the original on 2012-05-09.
  13. ^ "Scientist who helps explain pain wins Grawemeyer Award – Grawemeyer Awards". Retrieved Jan 8, 2021.
  14. ^ "International Association for the Study of Pain | Welcome to IASP". Archived from the original on 2013-12-03. Retrieved 2013-12-02.
  15. ^ Melzack R (2011). Foreword: Relief of pain and suffering endured by millions of people. e-News for Somatosensory Rehabilitation, 9(1),5 (one page).[2]

Sources

The original version of this article was based on an article [3] from science.ca.
Great Canadian Psychology Website - Ronald Melzack Biography