Placebo Palliative—Part 2

Yet another fascinating example of the power of the placebo effect was described in the late 1880s by the famous anthropologist Franz Boaz. He wrote about an interview with an elder Kwakiutl shaman named Quesalid. (The Kwakiutl people are a tribe in the Vancouver Island region of Canada.) When Quesalid was a boy he thought that the tribe's shamans were fakers, so he plotted to expose them. He ingratiated himself with a shaman, who took him on as an apprentice.

Quesalid eventually learned the tricks of the shamanic trade—particularly one ritual in which a shaman attended to a sick member of the tribe. The ritual was to call for a ceremony, in which tribal members danced and chanted, while the shaman had secretly stuck a wad of eagle down feathers in his mouth. He would place his mouth on the body, over the “source” of the ailment, bite down on his tongue to draw blood, spit out the bloody wad, and pronounce the sick person cured, as if he had drawn out the sickness.

Quesalid realized that he had evidence of fraud he wanted. But before he could expose their hoax, he was summoned to the dwelling of a gravely sick boy. He was trapped. He decided to proceed with what he was convinced was a phony ceremony, and so he did. The boy immediately recovered. Quesalid went on to become a venerated shaman. (This episode is described in a 2011 book, Born Liars: Why We Can't Live Without Deceit, by Ian Leslie.)

Countless similar stories have been recorded by anthropologists. As in the case of Quesalid, many shamans know they engage in subterfuge, but still believe in their powers. And it works. Illusions do heal.

Decades after Quesalid’s confession to Franz Boaz, Henry Beecher discovered the power of subterfuge on the operating tables of WWII's Italy. He went on to test his hypothesis in carefully-controlled clinical trials at Harvard. And now in 2019, researchers at Dartmouth showed how anyone who believed in the potency of their treatment—even if it was phony—could cure. The human mind is a powerful organ. Belief is a powerful drive. Our bodily healing mechanisms can appear to make miracles.