ABSTRACT
The placebo effect, whether a result of inert medicines used in drug trials or tonics and herbs in everyday use was well established; and the studies of pain-relief medications, in which more than 50 per cent of placebo subjects reported short-term relief, were especially persuasive. The author was aware of a study that had suggested a mind-body connection in the apprehension of pain. During World War II, US military physician and anaesthetist Colonel Henry Beecher observed that only a third of the wounded soldiers he interviewed in Europe had requested morphine post-operatively. Yet, in his pre-war study of injured civilians, he’d found that, despite less serious tissue damage, four out of five patients had called for relief. Expectation, surmised Beecher, could impact on how one feels and heals.