The Placebo Effect

Placebo effect is defined “as a beneficial effect produced by a placebo drug or treatment, which cannot be attributed to the properties of the placebo itself, and must therefore be due to the patients belief in that treatment.” (placebo effect Oxford Dictionary) The role of placebos in modern medicine is poorly defined because there is a lack of understanding of what the placebo effect is and is a reminder of how little we know about the mind and body interaction. The placebo effect may be one of the most fascinating and versatile therapeutics treatments at the disposal of modern physicians. “The placebo effect is scientific proof that we as humans have the ability to heal ourselves.” In addition, the placebo effect is something scientist and
The original definition of “Placebo” was used to describe false physicians. As time went on, doctors began to use placebos they needed to develop protocols and controls for placebos. Notably Dr. Henry Beecher developed what he called the “double down technique” which is now called the “ double down trail” which was neither the doctor nor the patient know whether the treatment would be a placebo. This actually worked really well because it added control of psychology and other variables between the patient and doctor. Likewise as time passed new researched had emerged, thus the placebo was taken as a active medical treatment, which than led others to believe that placebos were the key to understanding how ones body heals through medical rituals. In addition, as doctors began to understand the placebo they began to construct theories, some of these theories include conditioning, the expectancy. The first theory of conditioning was the foundation for how a patient would respond to the “treatment” because of this it showed that people are imperative to react to a certain stimuli. The second theory of expectancy is dependent on ones faith and hope, because once they are given the “treatment” if they believe that they will get better they have a better chance of getting healthy quicker as opposed to someone who doesn't think they will get
Scottish philosopher David Hume claimed that contents of the mind are made up of perceptions, and there are two types - 1. Impressions and 2. Ideas. Impressions are likely perceptions that we hear, see, and feel, ideas are the remains in our brain, after impressions, and are often vague notions. The placebo effect is relative to this theory because our mind during the “treatment” thinks that we are getting medicine to help fight the sickness, because before our mind had an impression of taking medicine to get better. Moreover since the mind thinks that this medicine will help the mind has the ability to “heal” or “cure” someone of the sickness because they though that the medicine was “real”. In addition, if we have an impression that previous treatments had worked than the “treatment” or the placebo will because as proven by experiments in the past if one believes that the placebo will work than they have a higher chance of getting healthy. In conclusion even though there are not any philosophies about the placebo effect, it still applies to some theories developed by