His greatest source of joy and support was his family. His charming, delightful wife Ruth gave him love and the kind of life he wanted to live-to work hard, play hard, and enjoy all the good things in life.
Pain, he argued in that work, is a transactional process which involves continuing interactions and feedback loops among all parts of the nervous system.
Bill beamed to hear about our new evidence for the presence of a brainstem system which exerts tonic descending inhibitory control over pain-signaling input.(比尔喜笑颜开地听我们关于脑干系统存在的新证据，该系统对疼痛信号输入施加紧张性下行抑制控制。)
回答疼痛问题时面临的困难：
What is the nature of the organic lesion?
How can it bring about such widespread and disabling signs and symptoms?
By what means does injection therapy modify this organic lesion?
How may such a modification act to abolish the extensive disturbances of function?
Why does the beneficial effect persist?And while pain is generally considered a thalamic perception, an interplay between the thalamus and the various parts of the cortex takes place to modify the pyhsical sensation.
He called attention to the fact that mechanical or electrical stimulation of the nerves of each special sense organ called forth sensations appropriate to that organ, and no other.
他注意到这样一个事实，每一个感觉器官的神经元的力或电刺激被称之为第四感觉，只针对于那个器官，没有其他的。
他提醒人们注意这样一个事实，即机械或电刺激每个特殊感觉器官的神经，只会唤起该器官特有的感觉，而不会唤起其他感觉。Sensation, therefore, consists in the communication to the sensorium, not of the quality or state of the external body, but the condition of the nerves themselves, excited by the external cause.
因此，感觉在于和中枢系统的交流，不是外部身体的状态，而是由外部因素刺激的神经他们自己的状态。
因此，感觉不在于对外部身体的性质或状态的感觉，而在于对外部原因刺激的神经本身的状态的感觉。