Sadly, the above piece of information is nonsense. There is no such thing as a del. Pain has no unit as of today, and it's really not surprising as to why.
Recently, I theorized that the reason pain doesn't have a unit is because it is not a physical quantity. A physical quantity is defined as "the physical property of a phenomenon, body or substance that can be expressed in a numerical magnitude, a unit, and (sometimes) direction. It remains unchanged throughout time and space." Pain defies several points in this definition, as can be immediately ascertained.
However, to understand the theory better, we also need to answer the million-dollar question; what is pain? To understand why pain is not a physical quantity, it is necessary to actually understand what it is, in my opinion. Pain is defined, according to Wikipedia, as "a distressing feeling caused due to damaging or intense stimuli."
We are capable of feeling pain, or that is to say, the 'distressing feeling' defined as pain, because of specialised nerve cells in our body called nociceptors. When we come close to 'damaging or intense stimuli,' the nociceptors activate, and a special signal is sent to our brain, which then directs the damaged cells to produce an enzyme called COX. COX, in turn, causes the release of chemicals called prostaglandins, which form a cushion and inflammation around the damaged area. This causes the 'distressing feeling' called pain.
Now, we have established that pain is a feeling, not a quantity, which means that pain is differently felt for different people! If a tween and a thirty year old adult are hit with the same amount of force, it is likelier that the tween shall feel more pain than the adult, even if the force with which they were hit was the same.
Of course, this does not mean that it is impossible to measure one's degree of pain- it is just that we cannot use the amount of force one is struck with as an indicator, nor can pain be classified as a physical quantity. This begs the question, however; how can we measure pain?
One possible method of measuring pain was theorized in the 20th century, wherein a machine called the dolorimeter was used to apply heat or pressure onto someone's skin, to measure how much pain they felt at certain temperatures. However, this method was determined faulty because it relied on people's perception of pain, and no researcher was able to accurately determine one's degree of pain with the dolorimeter.
Another possible method is to use specialised machines and brain scans to determine how many nociceptors are being activated during the application of damaging stimuli. However, in today's day and age, this method is too expensive to use.
If and when we develop a method to measure pain, I believe it should be tailored to one's perception of pain and not the degree of pain itself. If we can do that, it can be applied to processes such as intensive medication and therapy, so these may become as non-painful and non-stressful as possible.
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