The Placebo Effect of the Medical Word

Until the mid-seventeenth century, there were only a handful of active drugs in the entire medical pharmacopoia: opium, belladonna, foxglove, willow bark, some cathartics, and antiparasitics. All others were either placebos or nocebos; therefore, most of those who were cured did so believing in the therapeutic effect of the concoctions they consumed, but above all trusting in the experience and word of the doctor or healer who supplied them. Even today, in the most developed population centers of the world, there is a high percentage of cancer patients who use alternative treatments, based on their belief in the testimonies of those who apply them. The placebo effect is one of the most extensively studied and most consistently demonstrated medical phenomena throughout the history of medicine. The doctor and his word are the first placebo that the patient encounters, but unfortunately sometimes it turns out to be a nocebo.