the power of placebo

Interesting research was conducted in the cardiac ward of a major American hospital with patients suffering from angina. Angina is a condition in which arteries supplying the heart become restricted, producing acute chest pain. The drug, digitalis (traditionally a derivative of the foxglove plant), is known to help with the acute symptoms of an angina attack. Once this drug is administered it generally brings fast relief. In this experiment, fifty percent of patients who suffered from an acute angina attack were given digitalis and the other fifty percent were given a placebo. Even though the second group were just given sugar tablets, a significantly high proportion responded favorably and their symptoms subsided.

Even more interesting was that half of the doctors who prescribed the placebo knew that they were doing so, while the other half thought that they were giving their patients the real drug. Surprisingly, the patients who received a placebo from doctors who were under the false impression they were prescribing the real drug responded much better than those patients who received a placebo from doctors who knew what they were prescribing. So, not only was the belief of the patient significant in their response, but so was the confidence of the doctor.