ABSTRACT
In his novel The Egyptian Mika Waltari depicts how an ancient physician Senmut was once visited by a female patient who ‘sighed and moaned and lamented over her many afflictions’.1 After listening to the patient the physician
When the woman left the surgery, Senmut’s son gave a baffled look at his father who seemed embarrassed, coughed once or twice and then said:
In the case above the physician deliberately prescribed a treatment of which he himself seems to have doubted the efficacy. Administering non-effective treatment may also happen inadvertently, as the following real-life case vignette from contemporary medical practice demonstrates.
