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Scripture for reflection
- Job 2:7–10
- 2 Corinthians 12:7–9
Background
The first edition of The Problem of Pain closes with a short appendix contributed by Robert Emlyn Havard (1901–1985), an Oxford physician who was Lewis’s own doctor and a longstanding member of the Inklings, the informal Oxford literary circle that also included J. R. R. Tolkien. Havard’s friends in the group affectionately nicknamed him “the Useless Quack” — in spite of, rather than because of, his professional competence.
Lewis invited Havard to add a brief, non-technical medical note offering a physician’s perspective on the nature of physical pain, as a complement to the book’s philosophical and theological argument. UECF.NET does not reproduce Havard’s original text here, since it remains part of the copyrighted book; what follows is offered only as bibliographic and biographical background for readers who want to know who wrote it and why.
Medicine’s scientific understanding of how pain signals travel through the nervous system, and how pain can be managed clinically, has of course advanced very considerably since 1940. Havard’s appendix is best read today as a period piece — a snapshot of one thoughtful Christian physician’s reflections on pain at the time the book was written — rather than as a current medical reference.
This page is original UECF.NET biographical background, not a reproduction of the appendix itself, which remains part of C. S. Lewis’s copyrighted book. Read the appendix in The Problem of Pain itself — from a library, bookseller, or the Internet Archive’s access-restricted lending copy.