Kaptchuk has conducted studies showing that placebos can be deliberately used to cure patients. Some of his more groundbreaking work explores the idea that the placebo effect can be harnessed even when a patient is explicitly told that they are being given placebos. Again, this underlines something easily overlooked—when you get a prescription for pills, it isn’t just the pills that do the curing. It’s everything else, too—your visit to the doctor, the effort it took to make an appointment, the drama of the doctor’s waiting room, the ability of the doctor to listen attentively to you, the
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