Placebos

“The placebo, Cabot claimed, was nothing more than a lie about therapy, and it was thus unacceptable in practice. As a treatment devoid of specific effects, the placebo placed the doctor’s control over treatment at stake without its usual justification in technical knowledge about the diseased body (Crenner II, 127). . . . the use of placebos would risk separating individual therapeutic influence over patients from its material justification. If therapeutic authority was grounded in special technical knowledge about the diseased body, then the use of placebos seemed a willful misrepresentation of this authority” (128). . . . for Cabot, it [placebo] was nothing but a deception. But placebos were more potent and complex mixtures than was allowed in these critiques, as the psychodynamic interpretations of Houston and others would suggest. Isolating the placebo so cleanly from its manifold meanings and associations was not easy” (133).