untitled

a dynamo of healing. This can very well lead to a definite improvement of the treated condition, and in
some cases, to a complete cure. This medicine, though, is nothing other than the placebo effect.
If the doctor is convinced that the treatment of the patient’s illness will be successful, the patient’s
perception of the doctor’s confidence is much more likely to produce a placebo response than if the doctor
is doubtful about his approach. Dr. K. B. Thomas from Southampton, England has shown that a doctor
doesn’t even need a prescription to help his patients. Dr. Thomas selected 200 patients who were suffering
from various symptoms such as headaches, stomach pains, back pains, sore throats, coughs and fatigue.
First he divided the patients into two groups. The patients in group one received a clear diagnosis and a
“positive” consultation, during which the doctor assured them that they would soon recover. He told the
second group that he wasn’t completely sure what was wrong with them and asked them to come back
again in case there was no improvement. Then he divided each group into two subgroups, of which one
received a prescription that was a placebo. After two weeks, 64 percent of the patients with the “positive
consultation” had improved considerably compared to 39 percent of the patients who received uncertain
advice. Of those patients who received a prescription (placebo), 53 percent had improved, whereas among
those without a prescription, 50 percent had improved. This experiment demonstrates that a medical
doctor can have a more powerful healing effect on his patient than a prescription drug.
This example may also explain an unusual phenomenon: doctors who really believe what they are
doing is best for their patients—although it may defy the logic of scientific understanding—achieve much
better results, and their patients do well. If a doctor can inspire a patient to believe that he is going to
improve, he has done a much better job than any sophisticated treatment may be able to accomplish. A
leading article in the medical journal Lancet asked why it should be wrong to give a placebo when the
essential modern therapeutic means have no better effects than placebos. It should be the primary aim of
medical training to produce a warm-hearted, honest and optimistic doctor who listens to his intuition and
feels both compassion and love for his fellow human beings. Medical students should be tested for these
basic human characteristics. Those students who are unable to pass this test should be prohibited from
practicing medicine. The doctor’s very presence can work as medicine. What kind of therapy he uses
may, indeed, prove to be of secondary or complementary value. Thus, the doctor as a living placebo-
provider can be more powerful than his treatment, without harmful side effects.
The current trend by large proportions of the population to seek alternative practitioners is not so
much based on what they offer to a patient. Rather, it is a matter of how they make their patients feel. The
fact that alternative therapists use mostly natural methods and compounds for their treatments makes
natural therapies more acceptable to the patient than medical treatments. It also makes their approaches
more humane and potentially more powerful as placebos.
We all have a preprogrammed natural instinct to know what is good and useful for us, although many
people have managed to subdue it. This gut feeling senses a healing effect from pure, fresh foods, healing
herbs and other natural remedies. An herb from the Himalayan mountains or a piece of ginger is more
likely to trigger a placebo response in us than the synthetic fat Olestra or a pharmaceutical drug used to
reduce blood pressure. Natural things are naturally pleasing to the body and mind.
A naturopath has become a symbol for natural healing. Even if his methods may not be very
effective, the symbol may still be powerful enough to trigger a good placebo response.
In every medical treatment, the placebo is actually the main determinant of the degree of success the
treatment has. The results of every controlled study ever done confirm this statement. If any other
treatment administered in the medical system proved to be as effective and consistent as the placebo
effect, it would most certainly have been heralded as one of the biggest medical breakthroughs of all
times. However, the placebo effect is never or only rarely mentioned in medical textbooks. This is