For those who haven't figured out that the real thing is actually fake.
The power which a man's imagination has over his body to heal it or make it sick is a force which none of us is born without. The first man had it, the last one will possess it. If left to himself, a man is most likely to use only the mischievous half of the force—the half which invents imaginary ailments for him and cultivates them; and if he is one of these—very wise people, he is quite likely to scoff at the beneficent half of the force and deny its existence.
- Mark Twain, Christian Science
For me, blind faith and absolute obedience towards something or someone was always furthest from facts, science, and truth. "Absolute submission" and "no questions asked" are terms made for the weak who don't have the courage to challenge the belief held by masses and need the approval of society to validate themselves, at least this is what I thought initially. Seeing my parent's pure trust in God's existence and thinking that his powers can truly uplift us mortals in desperate times was kind of vexing as their orthodox beliefs didn't fit them into my mould of ideal parents or humans.
But soon I realised that faith and belief don't just apply to religion. It applies to our daily social interactions, self-confidence, our entire present economy and sadly modern medicine too. It is true that more and more people now believe in science over religion but isn't their belief in science, just as blind as their predecessor's belief in God? How can one be sure that God does not exist? Because we have no hard evidence of his existence is the most trusted comeback but have people (who believe in Science) actually experienced Science in real life? Forget about the stuff one can't see like atoms, gravitational waves, electromagnetism or dark matter, most of us science believers haven't even seen galaxies, microscopic organisms or simply other planets with our own eyes (of course with the help of a telescope/microscope). Then why do we trust science over religion? Can I say we trust it blindly after a point?
Apparently, we are oblivious even when it comes to medical science. Do we really know how medicines work? What mechanism causes it to cure us? Or have we seen trials and tests of the pills we consume? How blindly do we trust our lives with something we have no idea about. As much as I hate to admit it, I can't deny the fact that modern medical science's existence is quite literally struggling to survive an unexplained phenomenon known as "The Placebo Effect". A phenomenon we know nothing about. We just know it works somehow but apart from the fact that it exists, we have no clue about it.
The frequency with which placebos are used varies inversely with the combined intelligence of the doctor and his patient.
- Platt
Be enthusiastic. Remember the placebo effect. 30% of medicine is showbiz.
- Ronald Spark
Words, ideas and beliefs are as powerful as the person using them. Kings, religious people, media and government have used it countless times for their own benefit. "Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.", those were the words of the brutal tyrant Adolf Hitler. He was ruthless indeed but knew how to breathe life into beliefs. Ideas have been used as weapons since times immemorial and there seems to be no end to it. The placebo effect is still something we can't wrap our heads around but it works on the same principle.
Placebo effect is a phenomenon which creates a physiological or psychological change in an individual by consumption or administration of a fake surgery or dummy pill capable of no inherent medicinal value that could bring about said changes. These changes are at times attributed to the patient's false beliefs that the pill or surgery is a real one but are not limited to them.
The word placebo has Latin roots. Placebo comes from Latin word placēbō meaning "I shall please" which in turn is derived from the word placeō meaning "I please".
However the term "Placebo Effect" was first used in Henry K. Beecher's 1955 paper "The Powerful Placebo" where he proves that the results achieved by modern medicine and placebos have no significant difference.
Negative or undesirable (side) effects caused by the use of sham surgeries and or fake pills which have no inherent ability to do so are termed as Nocebo Effect. Nocebo, as you guessed it comes from the Latin word "noceo" which means "to harm" and hence means "I shall harm". There are reported cases of actual deaths due to this effect.
The powers of the placebo are so strong that it may be morally wrong to call homeopathy a lie because the moment you say it then a placebo falls to pieces and loses its power.
- Stephen Fry
Placebos have wide-ranging applications in the medical field. Ranging from pills, tablets and creams to injections, surgeries and machines. For clinical trials and other purposes, placebos are given the same look and feel as the original pill/surgery. Colour, shape, size, smell, taste and all other aspects other than their therapeutic value are similar to those of the actual treatment. Yet the composition of placebos has never been standard or consistent.
Placebos are supposed to be made of inert ingredients that won't lead to any changes in the human body which is impossible. Even sugar pills which may be inert in certain cases can cause physiological changes in a person dealing with insulin problems. Sugar pills also cause changes in a healthy individual but whether such changes will affect the experiment is not known. We cannot truly create a pill which is completely inert and won't ever react once inside the human body. Therefore a perfectly ideal experimental environment is close to impossible as always.
According to FDA, there are no rules and regulations on what a placebo should be made of. Most of the experiments never disclose or share the contents of the placebos. So it is literally impossible to know what every placebo on the planet is made of. Yet some researchers have revealed the secret ingredients.
Pills and tablets are mostly made from some form of sugar or corn flour. Ointments, creams consist of moisturizers, jelly, wax and body lotions. Injections are filled with saline solution or water while during placebo surgeries incisions are made in the affected area and then sewed back without actual treatment.
The big bulk of response to antidepressants is the placebo response.
- Irving Kirsch
People fail to realise that a lot of our bodily functions run on autopilot. These actions can't be controlled by our conscious mind and sheer will alone. Natural reflexes, sleep cycles, fight or flight response and fending our body against harmful bacteria, viruses and infections are some of those. Sometimes what we consciously plan out might not be best for our own safety and well being. During such instances, our primitive instincts kick in and our body doesn't respond to our will.
For our brain, the body is an immature child. So the brain has taken upon itself to act as its guardian. Just like adults need to reward children with incentives on completion of positive goals and punishment on negative tasks, our brain treats our body in a similar manner. Releasing chemicals like dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin and endorphins to reward us when we accomplish something beneficial (healthy) and punishes us by using neurotransmitters when needed. Dopamine controls our mood and makes us feel positive and happy while neurotransmitters are responsible for pain simulation. Pain is not a disease, it is our body's natural defence mechanism. It acts as a deterrent and warns the human brain that continuing with the activity will lead to more pain which is not a desirable outcome and hence safeguarding our physical body in the process.
Similarly, fever is our body's reaction to an infection. Bacteria and viruses can't survive in hot temperatures and hence our body raises its temperature to get rid of them. Indigestion, headache, nausea and vomiting are some of the after-effects of over drinking alcohol. By vomiting our body expels all the excess alcohol that it can't digest. There are many examples of such mechanisms which we classify as ailments but are actually our body's internal reaction to certain conditions.
One can always perform a cost-benefit analysis of these defence mechanisms but according to our body, physical health and existence have a higher priority than the important office meeting that you won't be able to attend due to high fever or the dream date that you'll be missing due to a severe toothache. Anyway, without these contingency protocols, our competitive and foolish nature would often make us push the envelope even though we know the limits of the human body very well.
Some argue that placebos may only cure or subside effects that can be created by our own bodies like fever, pain, nausea and so on which sounds like a fair assumption. If our body can make us ill then it should have the power to heal us too. According to this argument, placebos can only cure self-inflicted conditions but tests show that placebos have even treated some incurable diseases like Congenital ichthyosiform erythroderma of Brocq which capsizes the entire theory.
To argue with a man, and especially with a woman, that there is little the matter with them might be thought injudicious, and to advise them to return at a more convenient occasion requires more time and resolution than writing out a prescription or administering a placebo.
- Steele
Following is a list of ailments cured or exacerbated by means of the placebo effect. This list is not complete by any means and does not contain all the possible cases or symptoms and diseases cured by placebos but should be enough to provide a general idea about the untapped power of this effect.
Modern medicine considers homoeopathy and every other alternative therapy as placebo. So technically everything cured by alternatives to modern medicine could be included in the above list.
It is important to distinguish the very respectable, conscious use of placebos. The effect of placebos has been shown by randomised controlled trials to be very large. Their use in the correct place is to be encouraged. What is inefficient is the use of relatively expensive drugs as placebo.
- Cochrane
Research on negative aspects of the placebo effect is yet to be performed in depth. According to the placebo effect whenever the physician is trying to be honest by showing you the severity of your condition by means of charts, statistics or other forms which indicate that the condition will probably worsen, he or she is indirectly hexing you and your situation is more likely to worsen after gaining the additional information.
Sublime is the dominion of the mind over the body, that, for a time, can make flesh and nerve impregnable, and string the sinews like steel, so that the weak become so mighty.
- Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin
"One must believe in the procedure for it to work" was the initial assumption. Deception being the key element and irreplaceable factor in its efficacy. However, studies have shown that people knowing about the true nature of placebos before consuming them have also benefitted from this magical effect which completely shatters the mandatory nature of deception associated with it. Treatments in which the participants know that the pill is a sham before consuming it are known as open-label placebos.
Some argue that informing the participants about the real nature of the trials might clear their beliefs or rid them of the bias they hold consciously but the subconscious element still remains quite untouched. Our body and mind subconsciously observe us consuming the placebo and hence react in a way it would react if a real pill was consumed. Of course, this is just a hypothesis considering the limited nature of knowledge we have of the subject.
How can bodies bring about such changes is still beyond our grasp. Releasing pain-killing chemicals, lowering the body temperature, nausea, sleep are some changes that our body and mind are capable of making but we've recorded much bigger changes. Changes that can't be achieved even by the application of science.
There is a case cited by Korzybski in Science and Sanity of a man who suffered from hay fever whenever there were roses in the room. In an experiment, a bunch of roses was produced unexpectedly in front of him, and he immediately had a violent attack of hay fever, despite the fact that the "roses" in this case were made of paper.
- S. I. Hayakawa
Apart from the usual chemical checks and scans, the medicine we consume has to be tested on people suffering from the said ailment before it sets foot in business and not everyone consuming the drug will be cured so how do we decide which medication should be sold to the public and which should be discarded? What percentage of people should be healed for the drug to be acceptable? What should be the ideal criteria to judge? One way is to pit the medication against a placebo. Currently, we rely on double-blind placebo tests. It may not be the best approach out there but that is what we currently use to judge the worthiness of a pill.
Problems in medicine do not mean that homeopathic sugar pills work; just because there are problems with aircraft design, that doesn't mean that magic carpets really fly.
- Ben Goldacre, Bad Pharma
Single blind tests are those in which the patients aren't informed about the treatment or tablet that they are about to receive. They might receive the real deal or the placebo treatment. In this way, researchers are able to minimise the bias caused due to participant's perception. Taking this a step further we have double-blind placebo tests in which the participants, as well as the researchers, are uninformed about who is going to receive which type of treatment. In triple blind experiments, even the committee that is responsible for organising and concluding the experiments are not informed. The reliability of results obtained from such experiments is much higher as compared to traditional ones.
According to FDA, for any drug to be available in the market, it has to first outperform placebo in 2 double-blinded placebo experiments. The unfair advantage is that failure in such trails is not considered as long as they can register 2 successes.
Less than 10% of medications pass the double blinded placebo test.
The placebo effect is getting stronger with each passing hour. This can be attributed to increasing reliance and trust of people in modern medicine. The common man now has more belief in modern medicine than ever before especially in countries like the USA where pharmaceutical companies are allowed to freely advertise their products on media.
Media does have a lot of power over today's civilization. Politicians, businessmen and government constantly use it to feed the people with ideas that they want the public to think about. The pharmaceutical companies are doing the same. Continuously consuming the idea that upcoming drug is far better than its predecessor has made us more confident than ever. Hence when participants are provided tablets and told that it will cure them, it usually does. Researchers argue that the increasing trust is the root cause of increasing failure of the double blinded-placebo test.
Some patients are so unintelligent, neurotic, or inadequate as to be incurable, and life is made easier for them by placebo.
- Handfield-Jones
This abnormal phenomenon works not only on humans but on animals as well.
Researchers examined mice in 1982 which were genetically predisposed to systemic lupus erythematosus, a condition which causes the immune system to attack healthy tissue. When left untreated it can lead to death. The medication that suppressed this excessive immune activity and sugar water were paired together. The researchers made sure that mice always consumed the combination together. Later the combination was replaced with just sugar water and no medicine was provided but the physiological response of mice remained the same. Their bodies reacted as though they received the drug.
Canine seizures and epilepsy have been treated with placebos in the past. There has also been extensive research in human touch on animals. Being pet by humans reduces heart rate in dogs and horses, it also causes major vascular changes, increased productivity in milking animals and a lot more. On the other hand, negative responses like increased stress and anxiety in animals have also been recorded when the animal isn't compatible with the physician.
As we can see, actual changes have been documented even in case of animals. The placebo effect does exist and work on animals even though the expectation factor is less or absent when compared to humans. Overall, the effect in animals is similar to humans.
Some argue that the effects are partially linked to pet owner's expectations of the treatment. During the course of treatment, the pet owner monitors and checks the health of their pet in a more concerned manner which itself can be enough to heal. Catering to the needs and symptoms of the pet is always beneficial to its health. Pet owners sometimes report improvement even when there is no apparent change in the health of their pet. This is usually used as a counter-argument to the placebo effect in animals.
One can't write an article about placebo effect without mentioning Pavlov. Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov performed this experiment in the 1890s. He used to ring bells before feeding dogs. He continued this exercise to a point where dogs associated the ringing of bells to actual food. Later the dogs began to salivate just by hearing the sound of the bell. They didn't need actual food in front of their eyes for it.
If a placebo is prescribed by a physician because it is thought that it will help the patient, then it is a specific remedy and therefore not a placebo at all.
- Shapiro
Placebos don't work equally in every situation and the reason behind it is still unknown. There are a lot of factors at play. Though science is yet to fully grasp it, we have been successful at relating some of the factors to end effect.
Red coloured pills are used as uppers, blue colour is more effective for relaxation in downers, yellow is helpful with depression, white is better at curing stomach aches.
The effectiveness of placebos is directly proportional to its size. Bigger the pill, stronger is the effect.
Our minds tend to associate price with quality and hence there exists a direct correlation between the price and effectiveness. The efficiency of placebo increases with its price.
Well recognised brands are always linked to better results. Hence branded placebos work better than new or unknown ones.
Price, brand and packaging come under the same umbrella and work under the same assumption. Better packaged placebos have lead to better results in clinical trials.
Placebo effect increases linearly with the number of pills.
Placebos work better when the patient is assured that the treatment has previously worked on someone they know personally or when patients are somehow convinced that it is better than any other treatment available in the market.
Pills are more effective than ointments. Capsules are more effective than pills. Injections work better than capsules and finally fake surgeries and machines show even better results than injections.
Machines and Surgeries > Injection > Capsule > pill > Ointments
Doctor or physician treating the patient should act in a more concerned manner. Talking to a patient about their medical past, getting to know them on a personal level and developing a comfortable rapport before the treatment can positively impact the treatment. Displaying doctor's past success record to the patient in a subtle manner enough to prove his/her competency can also affect the treatment.
Apart from the doctor's qualification, the entire setup of the hospital room, from the scent of medicines to the view of organised degrees on the walls, every little detail counts and the more professional it looks, better will be the results of the placebo.
If the patient has seen the particular medicine in a commercial or heard of it somewhere then a corresponding placebo will work better than an unknown new one.
Patient's beliefs matter a lot when it comes to the placebo effect. For example, blue placebos are usually better as downers however in case of Italian men, blue placebos actually make them pumped up in general since they have a strong connection with their football team which happens to wear blue.
Even with all the above factors in place, one can't guarantee or correctly predict the outcome of a placebo. Placebos work differently on different individuals and we have no means to predict it. Researchers believe it has something to do with our genes.
I felt Mr Willard had deserted me. I thought he must have planned it all along, but Buddy said No, his father simply couldn't stand the sight of sickness and especially his own son's sickness, because he thought all sickness was sickness of the will. Mr Willard had never been sick a day in his life.
- Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
Activities which can be closely associated with placebo effect are described below. These observations may or may not be tagged as placebo effect but they work on the same principle.
Along with making us physically fit and active, exercise also has other hidden positive effects like decreasing stress, anxiety and depression to boosting our confidence, better sleep and creating an overall positive attitude. While strong muscles and increased stamina can be directly attributed to the workout regime specific to an individual, other benefits are termed as placebo. A person may feel anxious while exercising close to someone who they find attractive or fit and the physiological changes would be different after the session if certain conditions are changed including exercise group, environment, visuals and belief.
This needs to be addressed in a separate article altogether. Alternate therapies like homoeopathy are considered placebos by modern science due to the fact that no direct relation can be established between the treatment and the cure of the disease. Homoeopathy involves diluting the medication to a point where in some cases not even a single atom of the actual medicine is present in the final solution. This philosophy is said to increase the potency or effectiveness of the medicine which seems to be contrary to scientific findings since dilution always leads to decrease in concentration which means the resultant solution would be less effective. According to homoeopathy, water has the ability to retain properties of substances previously dissolved in it which means it should also retain properties of garbage, acid, animal excreta, dead matter and everything previously dissolved in it unless this ability has a time limit.
If you've done rock climbing in the past then you know that there is a rope attached to you for safety purposes. Even if the climb is an easy one, we feel a bit more confident and relaxed when we have rope as a safety measure. Our grip is tighter and our palms are dry whereas in the absence of the rope we can feel anxiety and sweaty palms even though in most cases we don't usually use that rope ever. According to my personal opinion, the rope, in this case, acts as a placebo. It makes us confident and better performers without actually adding any direct value to the experience.
Placebos have been used throughout history. Science has recently tracked the effect. Superstition, black magic, astrology, horoscope, religion and everything irrational that heals people due to their faith in them can be somehow completely or partially attributed to placebo effect. In most cases people confuse correlation with causation.
Hypnotism like placebo works on the principle of belief, trust and subconscious mind. In both the cases the participant puts his faith in some external media which leads to the creation of certain unexplained physiological changes.
We become anxious even before reading the question paper. We cry on receiving bad news. We are happy just by thinking about someone or something. News and expectations create physiological changes in our body, they have no direct connection to our body and yet they can put someone into depression and even kill someone based on their severity. It can also create a positive effect and work for the betterment of their health without any medical intervention.
Yes, you read it right. We finally have apps that do nothing and still bring changes in individuals.
Religion is the placebo of the masses.
- Gregory House
Science has advanced a lot throughout the ages. From the average life expectancy of 35 years in the 1400s to 70+ years today, all credit goes to science. But even medical science had its fair share of dark ages and horrors.
We are still surrounded by flat-earthers, irrational cults and people who believe in black magic and superstitions so it's no surprise that treatments during the medieval times were something pulled straight out of horror stories. Some treatments included blood loss by leaches, purging, vomiting, consuming mercury, cannibalism, animal dung, changing patient's body temperature by extremely hot or cold baths, sacrificing animals, ostracising minorities, violating the weak, trepanning (punching hole in one's skull), self harm (example by whipping) to earn God's forgiveness.
Later with time we grew compassionate and less barbaric so we stopped cutting and hurting people but the methods we employed to cure ailments were still not so effective. Surely the remedy wasn't killing the individual but wasn't healing him either. It is only in the last 50 years or so that medical science has truly evolved into what it is today.
Ineffective medicine does not mean people didn't feel better after the treatment. For years, people were under the influence that losing blood really did cure them. People cured due to other causes but underwent blood loss attributed the change to it and might have spread the word about its efficacy or recommended it to their loved ones. Fear of death, an absence of alternatives, and lack of support to challenge irrational opinions, all lead to the rise of such bizarre treatments.
In short, the majority (if not all) of medical treatments before the 20th century can be marked as placebo.
Because medicine has been so concerned with its scientific growth, too little attention has been paid to advancing the art of medicine, to which therapy with placebos belongs, and consequently knowledge of the use of placebos has not progressentialsd significantly.
- Leslie
In the UK, close to 97%, doctors have prescribed placebos at some point in their career and this isn't an anomaly when you compare it with statistics from all across the globe. More than 50% of American and German doctors have done the same.
Nowadays doctors can't prescribe placebo without your consent. Doctors will have to inform you about the medication that you're about to consume before you have it. So, the short answer is "No".
It was first discovered by British Dr John Haygarth in the 18th Century.
We can fool our minds into inebriation using placebos. Tonic water and lime were used in place of vodka and participants reacted as if they were drunk. They scored worse on simple tests and their IQ dropped significantly.
Pure placebos are pills, tablets, surgeries or any other form of treatment that have no inherent healing abilities. Example: Sugar Pills.
Impure placebos are treatments having healing abilities that have no influence on the condition being treated. Example: Antibiotics for viral infections.
Sufferers came to her from all around, and she laid her hand upon them and said, "Have faith—it is all that is necessary," and they went away well of their ailments. She was not a religious woman, and pretended to no occult powers. She said that the patient's faith in her did the work. Several times I saw her make immediate cures of severe toothaches. My mother was the patient.
- Mark Twain, Christian Science
Listed below are documented studies which confirm the working of placebo effect under different conditions. Each case is unique and distinct lessons can be drawn.
At Manchester, Dr Chris Beedie performed an experiment. Elite British national cycling champions were gathered and informed that they were called to test 2 new performance-enhancing drugs. First containing caffeine and ergogenic acids and second containing caffeine, nitrates and bicarbonates. The two sets of pills differed in appearance but in reality were nothing but placebos containing the same (inert) corn flour. The participants were told to perform twice, once before consuming the pill to record their base performance and then after consumption of the placebo. They were told to give their 100% in both trials and were given a 4-hour break between the two rounds. The cyclists fared much better in the second run even after being tired from the first one. Some even reported less pain and easier performance on the second trial. One participant even broke his personal best after having the placebo.
Prof. Fabrizio Benedetti from the University of Turin performed this experiment. The participant was given a fake oxygen cylinder and strapped on with devices that monitored his heartbeat, brain activity and neurotransmitters in the body. He was told to perform a snowy hike at altitudes where atmospheric oxygen levels were below average. Usually, people need oxygen cylinders for such tasks since low oxygen in the air means less oxygen in the blood which leads to increased PGE2 (type of neurotransmitter) levels in the body resulting in symptoms like pain, altitude sickness, lower work efficiency and so on. The participant wasn't informed about the cylinder being a fake one. He could easily complete the task without any symptoms of altitude sickness. Though the oxygen levels in his body didn't rise, his PGE2 levels were abnormally low indicating that the fake oxygen cylinder did create a literal and measurable neurological change in the individual which helped him to perform better.
This incident is from Mayo Clinic located in Rochester, USA. Dr David Kallmes used to perform back surgeries. He took 130 patients and divided them into 2 groups. One group received the actual surgery while the second group received incisions, anaesthesia and stitches in the name of surgery. Patients who weren't able to walk or do daily regular chores like washing dishes were playing golf just after 2 weeks of the fake surgery. There were no physical and functional differences between the patients of the two groups. The results of the fake and real surgery were approximately the same.
Tor Wager from the University of Colorado performed this experiment. Patient's brain activities were scanned for any changes while they were subjected to heat pain. Prior to the application of heat, patients were treated with fake and real local anaesthetic creams. Brain released opioids in both the cases which are natural painkillers of our body. Both the creams worked equally well and there were no significant differences between the two.
Placebo has shown great results when it comes to Parkinson's disease in multiple cases. Parkinson's disease is a disorder of the central nervous system that affects basic movement and causes tremors due to the brain's inability to produce dopamine. A patient suffering from the same was treated with placebo and the results were phenomenal. At once he couldn't even reach his home from a distance of 50 feet but was later able to function normally even though he was just consuming placebos. The patient wasn't informed about the deception in this case.
This is one of the most interesting case studies. People suffering from IBS show symptoms along the lines of bloating, gas, cramps, stomach aches, diarrhoea and constipation. Like Parkinson's disease, placebos have received a positive response when it comes to treating IBS. Prof. Ted Kaptchuk from Harvard Medical School conducted an experiment where he prescribed placebos to people suffering from IBS. Interestingly, patients were informed that the pills they will be consuming were actually placebos having no inherent medicinal value, in short, it was an open-label placebo experiment. The results were out and within 3 days almost 62% of the participants reported positively.
In this case, the doctors used acupuncture to treat IBS. Indeed the treatment was fake. Here the patients were divided into 2 groups. For group one, the doctor-patient interaction was kept to a minimum, the doctor didn't speak much to the patient and interaction was kept formal. For the second group, the doctor started by developing a good relationship with the patient by diving deep into the medical history of the patient's illness, how it affected their work, family and personal life. She displayed empathy and compassion, her degrees were hung on the walls and she seemed more competent in general. After the treatment, 42% of group 1 were cured whereas 62% of group 2 were cured.
Prof. Irving Kirsh from Harvard Medical School performed an experiment where hypnosis was used instead of local anaesthesia for tooth extraction. It worked perfectly and no anaesthesia was used. Placebos and hypnosis work on the same principle of belief, expectation and suggestion. The patient was told to rate his pain throughout tooth extraction and the highest recorded pain was 3 out of 10 but without anaesthesia, it should have been close to 9 out of 10 which is astonishing.
Doctor by the name of Albert Mason cured a child of this deadly disease which was completely incurable at that time. He thought the child was suffering from warts which could be cured by hypnosis. Congenital ichthyosiform erythroderma of Brocq is a skin disease where the skin gets cracked and becomes tough like an elephant's hide, it is genetic and children diagnosed with it usually die at a very early stage. Dr Albert didn't know that he actually performed a miracle until he had cured the boy. He treated the child considering that the disease was curable and it actually worked. Following this incident, multiple patients approached him regarding the same but sadly the magic couldn't be replicated because according to him, this time he knew that the disease was actually incurable.
In the 18th century, a man by the name of Elisha Perkins fooled people using devices he termed as "tractors". They were wand like pieces and needles about 3 inches long which he claimed were made out of a special material but in reality were just made of brass and steel. He said that tractors could help with sore joints and aches and charged enormous money for using them over the affected area and surprisingly enough the patients did feel better after the treatment. British Dr John Haygarth used different materials like bone, pencil, tobacco to make similar looking tractors and found that the same results could be achieved and thus concluded that the cure was always within the patient's head.
Alternatives to modern medicine like acupressure, chiropractic therapy, aromatherapy, Ayurveda, homoeopathy and a lot more promise to cure every form of ailment that man has ever experienced. Acupuncture is one of the options couples look forward to when faced with conception problems. It has proven to be effective when modern medicine fails in cases of infertility. All these alternative treatments are termed as placebos by modern medicine since they can't be studied in a scientific manner.
Women suffering from polycystic ovarian syndrome were divided into 2 groups. After 6 months, 5 out of 33 women consuming placebos became pregnant and 7 out of 32 women consuming real medicines reported positively. In some tests, the results were as high as 40%. Researchers claim that the act of consuming a placebo decreases the overall anxiety and stress which helps in conception.
Researchers from the University of Michigan injected salt water into the jaws of 14 healthy individuals so that they could experience pain. Later they were provided placebos but were told that they were actually consuming painkillers. The participants reported pain relief and their PET scans supported it.
King of England, Charles (the second) healed more than 100,000 people by laying a hand over them.
Prayer may be a placebo for the disease of helplessness, but placebos can make you feel better.
- David Mitchell
Same principle, different results. Consider it a double-edged sword. Following are recorded incidents of the nocebo effect.
In 2002 a group of patients were subjected to chemotherapy in order to cure them of gastric cancer. One-third of these patients underwent fake therapies but these patients soon experienced side effects of chemotherapy including but not limited to hair loss, nausea, anaemia, diarrhoea and so on.
Sam Londe was diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus in 1974. Doctors removed the tumour but knew it would soon resurface and had warned Sam about it in advance. Sam died a few weeks after the operation. When his body was sent for autopsy, doctors found 2 tiny nodes in liver and 1 in the lung which could not be fatal enough to cause the early demise. He didn't have cancer in his oesophagus at least at the time of his death. Sam died with cancer but not because of it.
Researchers in Germany and UK looked at brain scans of people who were given actual painkillers. 50% of them were told that they were consuming painkillers while the rest of them were told that they were given a placebo. The group which believed that they were given the actual drug reported loss of pain whereas the painkiller failed to work for people who thought it was a placebo.
When a patient is told that they might die by a person with credibility and authority then the patient actually dies in some cases. This is known as voodoo death. People have reported multiple cases of voodoo death. Heart patients who thought they were terminally ill and were told by doctors that they will die within "X" amount of time actually ended up dead within the specified time frame. However, after death, the autopsy report found no physiological symptoms that could be linked to their death.
A physician was diagnosed with malignant tumours in both his lungs and doctors informed him that he had just five years to live. Being a surgeon himself, he knew they weren't lying statistically so he believed them. Exactly five years later when he was snorkelling in Maui, he died and was found unconscious on the beach.
A histamine prick was used to create skin rashes on participants. They were treated with creams that could heal the rash. After 10 mins one group was told that the cream would cure the rash and it worked perfectly. The second group was told that the cream would worsen their condition and it actually did.
“My psychiatrist diagnosed me a Hypochondriac. I said, "Okay, can you prescribe me a placebo?"
"Not for Type-2 Hypochondriacs," he said. Your types would just fake faking. Then we'd have a real problem.”
- Brian Spellman
