When John Milton wrote in Paradise Lost that the mind can make a heaven of hell and a hell of heaven, without realizing it, he was talking about the “placebo” and the “nocebo” effect. “Placebo” comes from the Latin “I will please” and refers to a situation whereby a beneficial effect on the body comes about as a result of mental activity. The classic example is relief of pain from a sugar pill when the patient believes that a real medication has been administered.
The first to recognize and demonstrate the placebo effect was English physician John Haygarth in 1799 when he tested a popular medical treatment of his time, called "Perkins tractors", which were metal pointers supposedly able to 'draw out' disease. They were sold at the extremely high price of five guineas, and Haygarth set out to show that the high cost was unnecessary. He did this by comparing the results from dummy wooden tractors with a set of allegedly "active" metal tractors, and published his findings in a book “On the Imagination as a Cause & as a Cure of Disorders of the Body.” The wooden pointers were just as useful as the expensive metal ones, showing "to a degree which has never been suspected, what powerful influence upon diseases is produced by mere imagination.”
The common belief has always been that for a placebo to work, the patient must believe that the treatment being used has a real physiological effect. It now turns out that this is not necessarily the case. Recent work at Harvard by Ted Kaptchuk showed that a sugar pill can work even if the patients know what they are getting. People suffering from irritable bowel syndrome were told that they were being given inert sugar pills but they were also told that clinical studies had shown that sugar pills can help improve symptoms though a “mind-body self healing” process. The sugar pills worked despite the patients knowing they were not getting any active ingredient.
These are fascinating effects and will be explored at this year’s Trottier Public Science Symposium at McGill on October 23 and 24 at 7 PM at the Centre Mont Royal. Our speakers are CTV’s Dr. Marla Shapiro, placebo expert Dr. Amir Raz and Dr. “Patch” Adams who rose to fame with his laughter therapy when he was portrayed in the movie by Robin Williams. A special chemical to make people happy may even be pumped into the air. At least that is what people will be told. Then we will sit back and watch the placebo effect.
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