When was the placebo effect discovered?
A patient uses a sugar pill that is chemically inactive or undergoes sham surgery in which no therapeutic action is performed. Yet, pain lessens, nausea goes away, moods are elevated. This is the power of the mind to influence the body; the placebo effect at its best. Placebos are widely popular today but you may wonder when was the placebo effect discovered?
Michel De Montaigne, a French philosopher wrote in 1572, “There are men on whom the mere sight of medicine is operative”. This shows that the learned and medical experts of the 16th century were aware of the power of belief and expectations. The placebo effect has a rich history which dates back to the time when useless tablets and potions were all that physicians had to offer to sufferers.
First Scientific Demonstration
It was around 1799 when the placebo effect was demonstrated scientifically for the first time by a British physician, John Haygarth. He decided to test a sham medical treatment popular at that time; use of expensive metal rods called Perkins Tractors to draw disease out of the body. Haygarth tested these rods against fake, wooden Perkins tractors that looked identical on patients. It was reported that around 4-5 patients of rheumatism felt their pain to improve. He has reported these findings in his book On the Imagination as a Cause and as a Cure of Disorders of the Body. Although, Haygarth did not coin the term placebo effect for what he had observed the word ‘placebo’ had been used in other contexts. Placebo originated from Latin and its literal meaning is ‘I shall be pleasing’.
Birth of modern use of the term Placebo
The term was reintroduced as it is used today in 1920 in a medical journal, The Lancet. The term placebo effect was used in clinical terminology some years later by an American anesthesiologist Henry K.Beecher. He is reported to have observed that some injured men during World War II, performed fine without morphine. After this report, many studies done on placebo effects have concluded that placebos work best in conditions where perceptions and beliefs play a significant role such as pain, depression, or anxiety. Various experiments have been done on different conditions and placebos have proven to be effective in many of them.
Beecher furthermore urged the use of placebos in not just treatment of ailments but in clinical trials of medicines too. Since then, placebos have become the gold-standard of clinical trials to evaluate medicine's true effects. These trials are carried on new medicines and formulas to observe their reactions to patients' health. In placebo driven drug trials, participants are segmented in such a way that one receives the placebo and the other receives the drug being tested. The participants may or may not be aware of what kind of treatment they are being given. The results are used to determine the effectiveness of the drug and if it is found to outperform the placebo significantly, only then is it accepted as a probable treatment. Since the use of placebos began in clinical trials, it has become vital for the new drugs being tested to fare not just better than any other drug but it must also have the ability to outperform the power of the mind over the body.
Placebo is truly a powerful phenomenon that makes use of our body’s built-in mechanisms to make us feel better or relieve pain. The endorphins released due to placebo are the same that are released by yoga, deep breathing, and meditation. Placebo is undoubtedly a precious innovation in medicinal history and still has a long way to go.
Placebo is a promising treatment and requires further in-depth research for us to be able to fully enjoy the exalted power of the human mind.