The fascinating story of placebos – and why doctors should use them more often - Deepstash
Top 7 TED Talks On Customer Success

Learn more about health with this collection

How to create customer-centric strategies

The importance of empathy in customer success

The impact of customer success on business growth

Top 7 TED Talks On Customer Success

Discover 42 similar ideas in

It takes just

6 mins to read

Placebo's as pleasing treatments: History of the concept

Placebo's as pleasing treatments: History of the concept

  • Plato's cure for headaches involved a leaf coupled with a charm. Without uttering the charm at the moment of application, the remedy was not effective. We would call Plato's "charm" a placebo.
  • In the 18th century, the term "placebo" was used to describe a doctor. In his 1763 book, Dr Pierce describes a visit to his sick friend, saying that he found "Dr Placebo" sitting at her bedside. She said she was well, and Pierce seems to imply that the positive effect Dr Placebo had was due to his great bedside manner, rather than the drops he gave.
  • Eventually, the word "placebo" started being used to describe treatments. In 1752, the Scottish obstetrician William Smellie used some innocent Placemus that his patient "may take between whiles, to beguile the time and please her imagination."

38

345 reads

Placebos in clinical trials

Placebos were used in clinical trials in the 18th century to debunk "quack" cures. The so-called "non-quack" cures included bloodletting and feeding patients the undigested material from the intestines of an oriental goat. These needed no trials because they were considered to be so effective.

An example of how powerful placebos are is during the second world war. Supplies of morphine were running out, and a nurse was seen to inject a wounded soldier with saltwater instead of morphine before an operation. The soldier thought it was real morphine and didn't appear to feel any pain.

34

291 reads

Testing if placebos really work

Early placebo trials that tested the effects of homoeopathy tablets revealed that doing nothing was better than both homoeopathy and allopathic (standard) medicine.

In the 1990s, Danish medical researchers compared people who take placebos with people who take no treatment at all. They concluded that there is little evidence that placebos, in general, have powerful clinical effects, but the researchers made incorrect comparisons. Today it is widely accepted that placebos are effective for some things, like pain, but not for everything.

33

279 reads

Placebo surgery

A review of over 50 placebo-controlled surgery trials shows that fake surgery worked as well as the real surgery in more than half the trials.

One famous study is from an American surgeon Bruce Moseley. 180 patients had such severe knee pain that even the best drugs failed to work. He gave half of them real arthroscopy and the other half placebo arthroscopy, where the incision was made, but no real procedure was performed. The placebo surgery worked as well as the real surgery.

37

261 reads

Honest placebos

A placebo can work even if the patient does not believe it is a real treatment.

This can be because patients have a conditioned response to an encounter with their doctor. Just like an arachnophobe's body can react negatively to a spider even if they know it's not poisonous, so a person can react to treatment from a doctor even if they know the doctor is giving them a sugar pill.

35

235 reads

The history of learning how placebos work

A comprehensive study published in 1999 found that placebo effects were caused by both expectancy and conditioning.

But some researchers argue that there is something mysterious about how placebos work. While it is easy to see what happens inside the brain to the amygdala, or the other bits involved, it is less clear what moved the amygdala in the first place.

36

230 reads

Placebo ethics

It is accepted that placebos are not ethical because they require deceptions. But this view does not account for the evidence that we don't need deception for placebos to work.
Further mistaken claims:

  • We can only trust placebo controls. New treatments that come along can be compared with a proven effective method. To be effective, it should be at least as good as the old one.
  • Placebo controls provide a constant baseline. This view is based on the view that placebo treatments do not work. It is mistaken. In a systematic review of placebo pills in ulcer trials, the placebo response ranged from 0% to 100% (complete cure.)

34

227 reads

CURATED BY

mil_sww

"A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor’s book."

stash-superman-illustration

Explore the World’s

Best Ideas

200,000+ ideas on pretty much any topic. Created by the smartest people around & well-organized so you can explore at will.

An Idea for Everything

Explore the biggest library of insights. And we've infused it with powerful filtering tools so you can easily find what you need.

Knowledge Library

Powerful Saving & Organizational Tools

Save ideas for later reading, for personalized stashes, or for remembering it later.

# Personal Growth

Take Your Ideas

Anywhere

Organize your ideas & listen on the go. And with Pro, there are no limits.

Listen on the go

Just press play and we take care of the words.

Never worry about spotty connections

No Internet access? No problem. Within the mobile app, all your ideas are available, even when offline.

Get Organized with Stashes

Ideas for your next work project? Quotes that inspire you? Put them in the right place so you never lose them.

Join

2 Million Stashers

4.8

5,740 Reviews

App Store

4.7

72,690 Reviews

Google Play

samz905

Don’t look further if you love learning new things. A refreshing concept that provides quick ideas for busy thought leaders.

Shankul Varada

Best app ever! You heard it right. This app has helped me get back on my quest to get things done while equipping myself with knowledge everyday.

Sean Green

Great interesting short snippets of informative articles. Highly recommended to anyone who loves information and lacks patience.

Ashley Anthony

This app is LOADED with RELEVANT, HELPFUL, AND EDUCATIONAL material. It is creatively intellectual, yet minimal enough to not overstimulate and create a learning block. I am exceptionally impressed with this app!

Ghazala Begum

Even five minutes a day will improve your thinking. I've come across new ideas and learnt to improve existing ways to become more motivated, confident and happier.

Giovanna Scalzone

Brilliant. It feels fresh and encouraging. So many interesting pieces of information that are just enough to absorb and apply. So happy I found this.

Jamyson Haug

Great for quick bits of information and interesting ideas around whatever topics you are interested in. Visually, it looks great as well.

Laetitia Berton

I have only been using it for a few days now, but I have found answers to questions I had never consciously formulated, or to problems I face everyday at work or at home. I wish I had found this earlier, highly recommended!

Read & Learn

20x Faster

without
deepstash

with
deepstash

with

deepstash

Access to 200,000+ ideas

Access to the mobile app

Unlimited idea saving & library

Unlimited history

Unlimited listening to ideas

Downloading & offline access

Personalized recommendations

Supercharge your mind with one idea per day

Enter your email and spend 1 minute every day to learn something new.

Email

I agree to receive email updates