ABSTRACT
It has long been recognized by practicing physicians that procedures that offer patients reassurance or the expectation of help may lead to marked improvement in their clinical status,3 and many doctors believe that placebo intervention has an ethically acceptable place in clinical practice.4 The Latin-derived term ‘placebo’ originally appears in the Bible (placebo domino in regione vivorum, Psalm 116, Verse 9), where it may be literally translated as ‘I shall please’. This original meaning of please is still found in the first medical definition of the term in Hooper’s medical
dictionary in the early nineteenth century: ‘quality ascribed to any drug prescribed to please the patient rather than being useful’. The first article dedicated to the placebo effect did not appear until 1945: ‘A note on placebo’ by Pepper.5 The potency of belief and expectation in affecting health is also underscored by such dramatic harmful effects as voodoo death, which in contrast can be referred to as a ‘nocebo’ (‘I shall harm’) effect.6
