Placebo as the Real Deal

PLACEBO:

Noun: placebo; plural noun: placebos

1.     A harmless pill, medicine, or procedure prescribed more for the psychological benefit to the patient than for any physiological effect.

"His Aunt Beatrice had been kept alive on sympathy and placebos for thirty years"

2.     A substance that has no therapeutic effect, used as a control in testing new drugs.

3.     A measure designed merely to calm or please someone.
 {{From the Latin meaning "I shall please"}

I have a friend who is a retired physician. She insists that most doctors don’t know much most of the time. But she also says that appearing to be in the know and having a Ms./Mr. Fix-it demeanor is half of the treatment right there.

This didn’t make me happy to hear. We pay a lot of good money for what might be a fifty percent pretend.

In an article in the New York Times Magazine (November 10, 2018) the question as to whether placebo is part of the cure seems to be settled. The power of the mind was scientifically vindicated, sending the western scientific method into uncharted territory.

Seems to me this pertains to the rest of our endeavors. It tells me that if I think I can, I am already halfway there. In certain instances, I am all the way there.

So marching on, and encouraging ‘y’all to believe. Not in fairies, but in the power of the tales they tell.