Meaning, Medicine and the 'Placebo Effect'

An innovative re-thinking of the placebo effect, first published in 2002, that opens up new ways of understanding the phenomenon.

Daniel E. Moerman (Author)

9780521000871, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 17 October 2002

182 pages, 3 b/w illus. 3 tables
22.8 x 15.3 x 1.5 cm, 0.32 kg

'The wealth of experiments reported in this book demonstrate that medicine effects healing in many more ways than through active pharmaceutical ingredients… informative and entertaining…' Journal of Biological Science

Daniel Moerman presents an innovative and enlightening discussion of human reaction to the meaning of medical treatment. Traditionally, the effectiveness of medical treatments is attributed to specific elements, such as drugs or surgical procedures, but many things happen in medicine which simply cannot be accounted for in this way. The same drug can work differently when presented in different colours; drugs with widely advertised names can work better than the same drug without the name; inert drugs (placebos, dummies) often have dramatic effects on people (the 'placebo effect'); and effects can vary hugely among different European countries where the 'same' medical condition is understood differently, or has different meanings. This is true for surgery as well as for internal medicine. This lively 2002 book reviews and analyses these matters in lucid, straightforward prose, guiding the reader through a very complex body of literature, leaving nothing unexplained but avoiding any over-simplification.

Introduction: 'Pickle ash' and 'High blood'
Part I. The Meaning Response: 1. Healing and medical treatment
2. The healing process
3. Measurement and its ambiguities
4. Doctors and patients
5. Formal factors and the meaning response
6. Knowledge and culture
illness and healing
Part II. Applications, Challenges and Opportunities: 7. Psychotherapy: placebo effect or meaning response?
8. The neurobiology and cultural biology of pain
9. 'More research is needed': the cases of 'adherence' and 'self-reported health'
10. Other approaches: learning, expecting and conditioning
11. Ethics, placebos and meaning
Part III. Meaning and Human Biology: 12. The extent (and limits) of meaning
13. Conclusions: many claims, many issues.

Subject Areas: Clinical psychology [MMJ], Psychiatry [MMH], Medicine [M], Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography [JHMC]