The power of placebos to ameliorate symptoms has been with us for centuries. Western medicine today is finding it increasingly difficult to ignore the efficacy of placebos. In some clinical trials with placebos as controls, inert or sham replicas of active pharmaceutical drugs and even sham surgeries have been found to be as beneficial as the intervention being tested. In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Kathryn Hall examines the power of placebos, showing how their effects can influence our clinical trials, clinical encounters and, collectively, Hall argues, our public health. Hall, who has studied the placebo effect for years, reviews the history of the placebo in medicine, tracing its evolution from quackery and patent medicine to its use as a control in clinical trials. She considers the ways that expectations and learning affect our response to placebos; advances in neuroimaging that reveal the inner workings of the placebo effect; the “nocebo” effect; placebo controls in randomized clinical trials; and the use of psychological profiles and genetics to predict individual placebo response. The effects of placebos have been hiding in plain sight; with this book, Hall helps bring them into clearer view.
...More
Thesis
Mawdsley, S. E.;
(cited 2012)
Fighting Polio: Selling the Gamma Globulin Field Trials, 1950--1953
(/isis/citation/CBB001567417/)
Article
Jeremy A. Greene;
(2017)
Therapeutic Proofs and Medical Truths: The Enduring Legacy of Early Modern Drug Trials
(/isis/citation/CBB978757359/)
Article
David Teira;
(2019)
Placebo trials without mechanisms: How far can they go?
(/isis/citation/CBB058338660/)
Article
Miller, Franklin G.;
(2012)
Homage to Henry Beecher (1904--1976)
(/isis/citation/CBB001201290/)
Article
Donald Gillies;
(2017)
Evidence of mechanism in the evaluation of streptomycin and thalidomide
(/isis/citation/CBB434797387/)
Article
Christopher Rutty;
(2022)
“It Works! Now What?” Insulin Development, Production, and Distribution at Connaught Laboratories, University of Toronto, 1922–24
(/isis/citation/CBB378275066/)
Book
Stewart Justman;
(2016)
The Nocebo Effect: Overdiagnosis and Its Costs
(/isis/citation/CBB520372477/)
Article
Greene, Jeremy A.;
(2013)
The Materiality of the Brand: Form, Function, and the Pharmaceutical Trademark
(/isis/citation/CBB001320757/)
Article
Jonathan Fuller;
Luis J. Flores;
(2015)
The Risk GP Model: The standard model of prediction in medicine
(/isis/citation/CBB574976012/)
Article
Simon, Jonathan;
(2007)
The Origin of the Production of Diphtheria Antitoxin in France, between Philanthropy and Commerce
(/isis/citation/CBB000820146/)
Chapter
Christopher Crenner;
(2017)
Placebos and the Progress of Surgery
(/isis/citation/CBB552034486/)
Essay Review
Jim Endersby;
(2018)
Acknowledging Limits
(/isis/citation/CBB194422385/)
Article
Gradmann, Christoph;
(2004)
A Harmony of Illusions: Clinical and Experimental Testing of Robert Koch's Tuberculin, 1890--1900
(/isis/citation/CBB000501619/)
Article
Evan R. Ragland;
(2017)
Experimental Clinical Medicine and Drug Action in Mid-Seventeenth-Century Leiden
(/isis/citation/CBB248306987/)
Book
Edwards, Martin;
(2007)
Control and the Therapeutic Trial: Rhetoric and Experimentation in Britain, 1918--48
(/isis/citation/CBB000951980/)
Book
Kichigina, Galina;
(2009)
The Imperial Laboratory: Experimental Physiology and Clinical Medicine in Post-Crimean Russia
(/isis/citation/CBB001032965/)
Article
Dehue, Trudy;
(2002)
A Dutch Treat: Randomized Controlled Experimentation and the Case of Heroin Maintenance in the Netherlands
(/isis/citation/CBB000400969/)
Article
Edwards, Martin;
(2004)
Good, Bad, or Offal? The Evaluation of Raw Pancreas Therapy and the Rhetoric of Control in the Therapeutic Trial, 1925
(/isis/citation/CBB000470262/)
Article
Pidoux, Vincent;
(2010)
Expérimentation et clinique électroencéphalographiques entre physiologie, neurologie et psychiatrie
(/isis/citation/CBB001034704/)
Article
Nathan Sivin;
(2015)
The Question of Efficacy
(/isis/citation/CBB413624213/)
Be the first to comment!