This is the 5th and final example of the placebo effect from Hippocrates’ Shadow: Secrets from the House of Medicine (David Newman):

“In 1961 Henry Beecher, a distinguished Harvard professor and researcher of the placebo effect, published a paper comparing sham heart surgeries in two groups of patients from two different studies (the paper discussed only those who had received shams, not the real surgeries).* Using observations of interactions between the physicians and patients Beecher described the surgeons as enthusiasts or skeptics based on their attitude toward the procedure and toward the patients having the procedure. Patients of the enthusiast surgeons achieved nearly four times more complete relief of their chest pain and heart problems than patients of the skeptics….

…The healing is in the psychosocial and biologic contextthe contact, the ceremony, the bond between doctor and patient. The healing is not in the pill or the scalpel any more than the strength to run faster was in the sneaker, or the taste was in the color of the can….

…Medical education, taught primarily by physicians, is a reflection of medical culture. Currently, we dont routinely teach the meaning response. In heart disease and major depression, to name only two, estimations of the effect of placebo pills have shown that theyre proportionally more effective than most real medications.”