Doctors have long believed that children experience pain differently than adults. Unfortunately, most doctors thought kids felt pain less than grownups do, and didn't retain any memory of it. As late as the 1970s, infants underwent major surgery without anesthetics while older kids were often denied powerful pain-killers, on the theory that narcotics were too addictive and dangerous to be administered to children.
This barbaric notion was finally put to rest in the 1980s, as research proved that kids, with their still developing nervous systems, actually experience pain more intensely than adults do. But only recently have doctors begun to get...
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