The Doctor as a Placebo

A small bit of discussion around my last post brought to mind cardiologist Bernard Lown's book, "The Lost Art of Healing". I recalled Lown's story of a very sick cardiology patient who, upon overhearing that his heart was galloping, felt the way open to getting better. Not knowing that galloping was a not particularly good sign, he decided that if his heart was good enough to gallop then it was good enough to get better. In searching up an online version of that story, I found it included in a longer piece by Dr. Lown, The Doctor as a Placebo.

He stated emphatically that he knew exactly when the so-called miracle happened.

He was aware that we were at our wits’ end, blundering and confused, and did not seem to know how to help him. We had convinced him that we had given up hope and that “his goose was cooked.”

He continued, “One Thursday morning, April 25th, you come in with your gang, surround the bed, and look as though I was already in a casket. You put your stethoscope on my chest and urge everyone to listen to the ‘wholesome gallop.’ I figured that if my heart was still capable of a healthy gallop, I couldn’t be dying, and so I got well. So you see doc, it was no miracle. It was mind over matter.” The patient was of course unaware that a gallop was a bad sign. A wholesome gallop is an oxymoron.

So, if the therapy provided doesn't "hold water" when subjected to clinical trials, but you still feel better for it, ditch the remedy and buy a package of the provider.