It is well known that soldiers wounded in the heat of battle often feel no pain until the battle is over

(stress-induced analgesia). Many people have learned from practical experience that touching or shaking an injured area decreases the pain due to the injury. Stimulation with an electric vibrator at the site of pain also gives some relief. The relief may result from inhibition of pain pathways in the dorsal horn gate by stimulation of large-diameter touch-pressure afferents. Figure 111 shows that collaterals from these myelinated afferent fibers synapse in the dorsal horn. These collaterals may modify the input from nociceptive afferent terminals that also synapse in the dorsal horn. This is called the gate-control hypothesis. The same mechanism is probably responsible for the efficacy of counterirritants. Stimulation of the skin over an area of visceral inflammation produces some relief of the pain due to the visceral disease. The old-fashioned mustard plaster works on this principle. Surgical procedures undertaken to relieve severe pain include cutting the nerve from the site of injury or ventrolateral cordotomy, in which the spinothalamic tracts are carefully cut. However, the effects of these procedures are transient at best if the periphery has been short-circuited by sympathetic or other reorganization of the central pathways.