Physicians do not systematically prescribe placebos to their patients. Hence they have no way of comparing the effects of the drugs they prescribe to placebos. When they prescribe a treatment and it works, their natural tendency is to attribute the cure to the treatment. But there are thousands of treatments that have worked in clinical practice throughout history. Powdered stone worked. So did lizard's blood, and crocodile dung, and pig's teeth and dolphin's genitalia and frog's sperm. Patients have been given just about every ingestible - though often indigestible - substance imaginable. They have been 'purged, puked, poisoned, sweated, and shocked', and if these treatments did not kill them, they may have made them better. Irving Kirsch
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The term "placebo effect" was coined by an English physician named William W. Cannon in 1843 to refer to the improvement in health that comes from receiving medical treatment without receiving any active medication. As Cannon explained, "The term placebo is derived from the Latin for 'I will please' or 'I will be pleasing.' I propose to make it clear that the name should not be taken in a sense which implies any association with opium and other narcotic medicines." The placebo effect can be explained and researched in many ways, but the most common is that it causes people to feel better because they believe they received help.

Source: The Emperors New Drugs: Exploding The Antidepressant Myth

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