“Physicians do not systematically prescribe placebos to their patients. Hence they have no way of comparing the effects of the drugs they prescribe to placebos. When they prescribe a treatment and it works, their natural tendency is to attribute the cure to the treatment. But there are thousands of treatments that have worked in clinical practice throughout history. Powdered stone worked. So did lizard's blood, and crocodile dung, and pig's teeth and dolphin's genitalia and frog's sperm. Patients have been given just about every ingestible - though often indigestible - substance imaginable. They have been 'purged, puked, poisoned, sweated, and shocked', and if these treatments did not kill them, they may have made them better.”
Quote by Irving Kirsch
Work
The Emperor's New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth
Browse quotes and source details for this work. more
Author
You May Also Like
Source: The Laws of Medicine: Field Notes from an Uncertain Science
“I expect hypobaric therapy will become one of the many treatments for Long COVID.”
“We lose the right of complaining sometimes by forbearing it”
Source: The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
Source: The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
Source: The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
Source: The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
Source: The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
