In 1949, the American pharmaceutical industry introduced a new type of medication - antihistamines - designed to combat allergies, asthma and, it was thought, sinusitis and colds.
The publicity went into full swing, announcing that science had finally found a miracle cure for the common cold. Consumers flocked to their local pharmacies to buy the product and, interestingly enough, results were re-ported to be excellent in most cases.
The American army expressed an interest in the new drug, since a large number of soldiers tended to catch cold during rigorous training exercises.
Because sick soldiers can’t just take a few days off to rest and recover, colds would often degenerate into bronchitis and other types of respiratory
disor-ders. The army appointed a military doctor, Lieutenant Colonel Hoagland, to undertake a series of test before the order for the medication was actually signed.
To ensure that the antihistamines were effective, Dr. Hoagland divided his subjects into three groups:
• group #1 received no medication at all - colds were left to run their natural course;
• group #2 were given antihistamine tablets;
• group #3 were given tablets that resembled the antihistamine tablets in every way except one - they were made of lactose instead of medication (lactose is a sugar found in milk, and has absolutely no pharmaceutical effect).
Subject were told to report back in two days. When they did, Dr. Hoagland was amazed by what he found:
• members of the first group, which had received no medication, continued to suffer from cold symptoms;
• 35% of the second group - those who were given antihistamines - showed no more cold symptoms;
• 35% of the third group, which had received a benign medication substitute, also showed no more symptoms!
Dr. Hoagland concluded that the only benefits antihistamines had were psychological. Although the army did not place its order for the new medica-tion, Hoagland’s research generated a tremendous amount of controversy among scientists, and a host of further experiments were carried out on what came to be known as the placebo effect.
Although placebos look exactly like medications (tablets, capsules, sup-positories, syrup, etc.) they are composed of chemically inert substances like
distilled water, flour, lactose, and so on. The important thing is that subjects are not aware they are being given a substitute - they think it’s the real thing.
Placebo is derived from the Latin word ‘placere’ which means to please.
Doctors were already familiar with the term: instead of arguing with patients who demanded some type of medication even though they didn’t need it, or even though the medication would do them no good, doctors would simply prescribe a harmless substance in order to ‘placate’ them.
“It might not help, but it won’t do any harm…” was the way doctors looked at it. After Hoagland’s discovery, however, doctors actually began using placebos as a therapeutic tool. Experiments showed that a placebo’s degree of effectiveness depended to a great extent on the attitude of the doc-tor prescribing it, and on what the patient believed the supposed medication would accomplish. If a doctor said something like, “This is an excellent medi-cation, perfectly suited to your condition…” its effect would be much more positive than if he said, “We don’t know much about this medication. Give it a try and see what happens.”
Doctors Kissel and Barrucand reported an interesting experiment in which the same placebo was administered to two groups of patients suffering from bleeding ulcers. The first group was told by their consulting doctor that the placebo was a sensational new medication. The second group was told by a nurse (not a doctor) that the placebo was still in an experimental stage, and that its effects were not fully known. After a period of one year, both groups were examined. In the first group, 70% of patients had improved dramati-cally, while in the second group only 25% showed any improvement.
Clearly the attitude of the person prescribing the medication has an enor-mous effect on whether it is effective or not. The same researchers then con-ducted a double blind study, in which neither the doctor nor the patients knew whether the medication was real or not. The results were strange to say the least - in some cases a placebo was actually more effective than a real medication! Amphetamines, for example, which are designed to stimulate the central nervous system, improved physical endurance by 88%, while a placebo increased endurance by 132%! In 30% to 40% of cases, placebos were
just as effective as real medications for curing various disorders. The remain-ing 60% to 70% of subjects were less sensitive to the placebo for various rea-sons. Some were even diagnosed as being neurotic, and reacted negatively.
The placebo effect has even been used to replace surgery: placebo opera-tions (simple incisions without any real intervention) resulted in an equal number of recoveries for certain types of problems, with the positive or nega-tive attitude of the surgeon being a determining factor for success (another determining factor being the expectation of patients as to whether they would recover or not).
All this should give you some idea of how important suggestion is. As these and other studies show, even therapies that are seemingly based on concrete factors (medications or operations) are impacted by the power of suggestion.