The experiments, as they unfolded, led the researchers away from
any notion they might have had about pain relief. Most of the
subjects responded not by losing consciousness, but by leaping
around the lab, dancing, shouting, and possessed by poetic
epiphanies. Still, writes Jay, even this rage for pleasure would
eventually lead to a new outlook on pain: The Pneumatic
Institution’s curiosity about the mind-altering properties of
the gas, and particularly its “sublime” effects on the
imagination, were emblematic of the Romantic sensibility of its
participants, and their search for a language to map their inner
worlds. This sensibility, as it spread, would play an important
role in transforming attitudes to pain, but its early adopters
still held the social attitudes of their time. Davy believed
that “a firm mind might endure in silence any degree of pain,”
and regarded his frequent cuts, burns, and laboratory
misadventures as heroic badges of pride. Coleridge, by contrast,
was acutely and often morbidly sensiti