Hmmm, who's that moaning? Oh, Fug has a headache.
And his joints hurt, and his stomach too.
Thank goodness Vera's there.
She's taking care of him and waiting on him hand and foot.
And there are still a few of Dr Vera's chocolate tablets left.
Ah, I'm already feeling much better.
But that can't be. That was just a placebo.
Placebo? What's that again?
Who can explain it better than Dr. Mo?
A placebo is a fake medicine.
A true placebo doesn't contain any kind of real medicine.
It's usually just made up of sugar and starch.
So it shouldn't have any kind of effect.
The latin word 'placebo' is translated as:
'I shall please'
which basically means 'I will help.'
So placebos do work!
Even the ancient Greeks knew about the effects of placebos.
Plato wrote over 2000 years ago
that a certain medicinal herb would only work
if it was administered together with a spell.
But without the spell it would be useless.
This remedy worked without any active ingredient being inside it
and that's known as the 'placebo effect.'
Doctors are still being taken by surprise by this, even in modern times.
An American military doctor used exactly this trick during World War Two.
At the front they eventually ran out of morphine
that the wounded soldiers could take for their pain.
So instead, the doctor secretly administered table salt.
The effect was exactly the same.
Many of the soldiers experienced hardly any pain.
This completely confounded him.
But now we know that
a placebo works exactly like a painkiller in sparking pain inhibitors in the brain.
Substances in the body's defence system are released to suppress the pain.
So just seeing the doctor has an effect.
The patient expects to be given help.
Sometimes the pain recedes as soon as the patient enters the doctor's surgery.
The patient sees that they get better every time they go to the doctor.
The placebo effect is therefore often the result of a learning experience.
The doctor himself has a large part to play.
Through his empathy and care
he can do a lot for the healing process.
Just in the giving of genuine medicines
there's a placebo effect at work.
The expectation that medicine will help and that doctors heal
supports the healing process.
It works best
when a patient has complete faith in their doctor.
No problem for Vera and Fug, as they are very fond of one another.
Fug isn't really ill anyway. He was just feeling a bit unwell.
Now he's feeling much better
and that's purely down to Vera's loving care.
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