Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient Read Online Free PDF Page B

“satisfactory relief” when placebos were used instead of regular medication for a wide range of medical problems, including severe postoperative wound pain, seasickness, headaches, coughs, and anxiety. Other biological processes and disorders affected by placebos, as reported by medical researchers, include rheumatoid and degenerative arthritis, blood-cell count, respiratory rates, vasomotor function, peptic ulcers, hay fever, hypertension, and spontaneous remission of warts.
    Dr. Stewart Wolf wrote that placebo effects are “neither imaginary nor necessarily suggestive in the usual sense of the word.” His comments were connected to the results of a test in which specialized blood cells called eosinophils accumulate beyond their normal numbers and circulate throughout the system. The test showed that placebos can change body chemistry. Wolf also reported a test by a colleague in which a placebo reduced the amount of fat and protein in the blood.
    When a patient suffering from Parkinson’s disease was given a placebo but was told he was receiving a drug, his tremors decreased markedly. After the effects of the placebo wore off, the same substance was put into his milk without his knowledge. The tremors reappeared.
    During a large study of mild mental depression, patients who had been treated with sophisticated stimulants were taken off the drugs and put on placebos. The patients showed exactly the same improvement as they had gained from the drugs. In a related study doctors gave placebos to 133 depressed patients who had not yet received a drug. One-quarter of them responded so well to placebos that they were excluded from further testing of actual drugs.
    When a group of patients were given a placebo in place of an antihistamine, 77.4 percent reported drowsiness, which is characteristic of antihistamine drugs.
    In a study of postoperative wound pain by Beecher and Lasagna, a group of patients who had just undergone surgery were alternately given morphine and placebos. Those who took morphine immediately after surgery registered a 52-percent relief factor; those who took the placebo first, 40 percent. The placebo was 77 percent as effective as morphine. Beecher and Lasagna also discovered that the more severe the pain, the more effective the placebo.
    Eighty-eight arthritic patients were given placebos instead of aspirin or cortisone. The number of patients who benefited from the placebos was approximately the same as the number benefiting from the conventional antiarthritic drugs. Some of the patients who had experienced no relief from the placebo tablets were given placebo injections. Sixty-four percent of those given injections reported relief and improvement. For the entire group, the benefits included not just pain relief but general improvement in eating, sleeping, elimination, and even reduction in swelling.
    A. Leslie reported that morphine addicts have been given placebos (saline injections) and have not suffered withdrawal symptoms until the injections were stopped.
    A group of medical students were invited to participate in an experiment they were told was for the purpose of testing the efficacy of a depressant and a stimulant. They were informed in detail of the effects, beneficial and adverse, that could be expected from these drugs. They were not told that both “stimulants” and “depressants” were actually placebos. More than half the students exhibited specific physiological reactions to the placebos. The pulse rate fell in 66 percent of the subjects. A decrease in arterial pressure was observed in 71 percent of the students. Adverse side effects included dizziness, abdominal stress, and watery eyes.
    Medical officials of the National Institute of Geriatrics in Bucharest, Romania, undertook a double-blind experiment to test a new drug designed to activate the endocrine system and thus enhance health and the prospects for increased longevity. A total of 150 Romanians