Pain and a caned backside

 

This might sound like a daft question, but stay with me: can you remember pain? That is the actual hurt felt during a caning?

David Butler asked this question on the Neuro Orthopaedic Institute (NOI) Australasia website. Believe it or not NOI is trying to deliver a deep understanding of pain and its treatment.

Butler went to a boarding school during the 1960s and says he was often caned – he claims to hold the record of 34 canings in one term.

He writes, “I am not sure you can remember pain, the actual hurt of pain, but there was a whole experience of being caned that I can recall quite well. Caning was noisy. The cane ‘whished’ through the air and on impact there was a real smacking noise. If there was a queue for caning you could hear these noises before you took your turn. The waiting was the worst part. I can recall one night as a novice being told I was to be caned the next morning. I didn’t sleep well.”

He goes on, “The sting wasn’t confined to the small area under the cane; it was the whole buttock area that really stung... It also made you want to run. When that cane struck for the first time your whole body wanted to be somewhere else very quickly.

But the stinging only lasted maybe 5 to 10 minutes and you didn’t dare show that it hurt. I never saw a boy cry. Two whacks was usually the punishment, but I did once experience six and all I can remember of this was that it seemed to take a very long time. I find it interesting that I now can’t remember what I was being punished for that time.”

A caned boy became the centre of attention later in the showers where as many as 20 classmates would admire the cuts with respect. “You were suddenly someone VERY important. You see, caning causes neurogenic inflammation [swelling]. It goes red first, then the welts rise, and shortly after that, the bruising appears. The welts and bruises were in ‘tramlines’ – parallel red and eventually purple lines with a white line in the middle.

“If you were really belted, happened to be wearing your more threadbare pants that day, had overlapping cane sites or got flicked by the tip of the cane, it could bleed. This made you even MORE important in the shower.”

Butler goes on, “Three or more canings often made for an intricate pattern as the bruises matured. Such evidence of injury broke down boarding school hierarchy a little; the boys in the higher classes would talk to you, ‘What did you do to get that?’ Bruised bums can last a week so you got a bit of mileage out of it. Nobody ever asked if it hurt, it was all about the bruise, the number and what you did to warrant the caning.”

He clearly takes a scientific interest in caning. “Perhaps an exploration of the meaning of the entire caning event, which didn’t end with the last lash, is the most instructive in relation to pain. Taking the experience as a whole raises and reinforces the power of context; the awfulness of knowing pain is coming, the sound of the cane, the knowing it will sting but that there will be a hard-earned ‘badge of honour’ to show-off later. Perhaps the pain of having a tattoo or pushing beyond pain in physical training is equally modified by this effect of meaning. Knowing that you will be OK after the caning and that your increased status will outlast the bruises makes it futile for changing behaviour. I wonder if it would hurt more if all boys who were caned were excluded from the communal showers til the bruises faded?”

He concludes, “It’s the presence of blood, the bruising, the number, the respectful “what did you do to deserve that”, which dominates the caning experience. Pain is long forgotten. It is hardly needed.”

Picture credit: Sting Pictures

 

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