Placebo Effect

Placebo Effect

"The physician's belief in the treatment and the patient's faith in the physician exert a mutually reinforcing effect; the result is a powerful remedy that is almost guaranteed to produce an improvement and sometimes a cure." -- Petr Skrabanek and James McCormick, Follies and Fallacies in Medicine, p. 13.

The placebo effect is the measurable, observable, or felt improvement in health not attributable to treatment. This effect is believed by many people to be due to the placebo itself in some mysterious way. A placebo (Latin for "I shall please") is a medication or treatment believed by the administrator of the treatment to be inert or innocuous. Placebos may be sugar pills or starch pills. Even "fake" surgery and "fake" psychotherapy are considered placebos.

placebo effect