The Placebo Effect: An Interdisciplinary Exploration

A mere "symbol" of medicine-the sugar pill saline injection doctor in a white lab coat-the placebo nonetheless sometimes produces "real" results. Medical science has largely managed its discomfort with this phenomenon by discounting the placebo effect subtracting it as an impurity in its data through double-blind tests of new treatments and drugs. This book is committed to a different perspective-namely that the placebo effect is a "real" entity in its own right one that has much to teach us about how symbols settings and human relationships literally get under our skin.