PLACEBO
( It is Faith Healing )
Pla-ce’-bo
(plÃ¥-sÄ“’-bÅ‘), n. [Latin, “I shall please.”]
Med. A medicine, esp. an inactive one, given merely to satisfy a
patient.
Webster’s
New Collegiate Dictionary, copyright, 1961
-
A medication prescribed more for the
mental relief of the patient than for its actual effect on his disorder.
Webster’s New Collegiate
Dictionary, copyright, 1979
The mention of a placebo
makes people smile. It is the smile of a
shared secret. It connotes a beneficial
little trick pulled on the not-really-sick.
The placebo technique involves giving a pill to trick the complainer
into thinking something truly medicinal has been prescribed. Believing it is true medicine many have been
fooled into feeling better. At least
that’s how we have in the past thought about the placebo. Recent research indicates there’s much more
to it than fooling people.
Apparently when the
placebo is taken by trusting patients, it actually causes the body to heal
itself. When the sick, or injured person
pops the placebo pill into his system, the body can produce chemicals called
endorphins. One of these endorphis is a
pain killer more powerful than morphine.
Pain is then reduced or eliminated by the body’s own chemicals, the
production of which was stimulated by the placebo taken in “faith”.
The body can heal
itself. The self-healing capacity of our
human system is being stressed more and more by medical leaders. The placebo research underscores it in a
striking way. It shows that pulling the
right trigger can initiate self-healing.
Throughout all of history
healing has occurred in ways that defy modern science’s explanation. While some healing may come straight from
God, other recoveries may come through the mysterious miracles of faith in a
practitioner, an herb, a touch, a spiritual event that triggers the
self-healing potential of the human body.
That is a miracle of God too.
The trusting patient can
be helped and even healed by a placebo, in the form of a medicine. Obviously
faith in the healing power of God, the hand of a praying person, or a drop of
olive oil, can also release, trigger, or speed up healing in the sick or
wounded person.
Primitive people have
always responded to “unscientific” healing ventures. Civilized Americans who have trusted science
above all can hardly be helped by anything but the productions of
laboratories. Now as we see the evidence
of the body’s self-healing capacities even modern people may find that faith
can heal. We may begin again to ask that
the elders lay their hands on us, pray over us, and put the oil on us. Such
love, care, attention, may trigger the healing process God has created within
us.