Can The Mind Heal The Body?

I attended an English preparatory school from about the age of nine to thirteen. So 1947 was the year I started. It was the sort of place you read about in Charles Dickens.

One day, while playing soccer, I twisted my knee quite badly. Well, it was a sprain. Understandably enough, there was no in-house doctor. The nursing staff consisted of a very nice and sympathetic sister and a matron they'd recruited from one of H.M. prisons., or so it seemed to us. Going to the doctor was almost unheard of. Provided you were still breathing, that was all that mattered.

Anyway, the sister had a look at my knee and put her foot down with a firm hand, so to speak. She was taking me to the doctor and that was all there was about it.

He was a super old boy, with one of what we used to call Bomber Command mustaches. Waxed, the lot. He went through a big palaver of binding up my knee and then he asked me;

"Do you like chocolate?" Well, of course, this was like asking a man dying of thirst if he liked water. Naturally, I said yes.

"Hang on," he said. A minute later he came back with a square of chocolate on a plate. He crouched down and said;

"Now, this is very special chocolate. Inside there's a tiny pill straight from India. But before I give it to you, understand that it'll take about three minutes before it starts to work."

So that was that. We left the doctor and drove back to school. Just before we climbed out of the car, I mentioned to sister that my leg felt a whole lot better.

"Well, we'll keep the bandage on until tomorrow and I'll look at it again then."

When she finally unwrapped it, I had no pain and the swelling was virtually gone. So can the mind heal the body? Here was proof positive that it could, although it wasn't until years later that what I'd experienced was the placebo effect. If he'd have simply said; "Here's a piece of chocolate. That should do the trick," it probably wouldn't have worked.

But he made up enough mumbo jumbo -- secret little pills from India, and having to keep them locked away, that tricked my mind into believing it really was a special cure.

The placebo effect is really a post hypnotic suggestion. Another way this can happen is if someone's in a really bad accident, and are already in fairly deep trance state. Often, therefore, you can suggest that they stop bleeding, or if they've hurt their leg and it's causing them a lot of pain, simply suggest that the leg goes numb.

The placebo effect is a powerful tool. Unfortunately, it has an evil cousin, known as the 'nocebo' effect. There have been many cases where doctors have told their patients that they have six months to live, and at the end of six months, they've dropped dead.

But they were misdiagnosed in the first place, and it was found they weren't ill at all.