Many doctors know the story of " Mr. Wright". In 1957 he was diagnosed with cancer, and given only days to live. He heard that scientists had discovered a new medication, Krebiozen, that was1 against cancer, and he begged the doctor to give it to him. His physician, Dr. Phillip West, finally agreed. After Mr. Wright had been given an injection on a Friday afternoon, the2 doctor found his patient out of his "death bed", joking with the nurses the following Monday. "The tumours", the doctor wrote later,"" had 3 like snowballs on a hot stove."
Two months later, Wright read medical reports that the medication was fake. His condition immediately got worse again. "Don't4 what you read in papers, " the doctor told Wright. Then he injected him with what he said was " a new super-refined double strength" version of the drug. 5 , there was no drug, just a mix of salt and water, but again it worked. Wright was the picture of 6 for another two months until he read an official report saying that Krebiozen was worthless. He died two days later.
This story has been7 by doctors for a long time, dismissed as one of those strange tales that medicine cannot explain. The idea that a patient's8 can make a fatal disease go away has been thought of as too strange. But now scientists are discovering that the placebo(安慰剂) effect is more powerful than anyone had ever thought. They are also beginning to discover how such miraculous results are 9 . Through new techniques of brain imagery, it can be shown that a thought, a belief or a desire can cause chemical processes in the brain which can have powerful effects on the10 . Scientists are learning that a number of body reactions are not caused by information coming into the brain from the outside world, but by what the brain 11 to happen next.
"Placebos are' lies that 12 ,'"said Dr. Anne Harrington, a historian of science at Harvard University. "The word placebo is Latin for 'I shall please'(or I shall make you happy) and it is typically a treatment that a doctor gives to 13 patients to please them," she said." It looks like medication, but has no healing ingredients whatsoever. "Nowadays, doctors have much more powerful medicines to fight disease. But these treatments have not14 the power of the placebo, quite the opposite. Maybe when scientists fully understand how placebos work, the powerful healing effects of the human 15 will be used more systematically!
