摘要：Fabrizio Benedetti is internationally known for his behavioural and neurobiological work which has thrown much light on the placebo and nocebo effects – until recently a poorly understood mix of different phenomena served by different mechanisms. While this short monograph is addressed to lay readers, it is also a highly useful primer for physicians, nurses, and biomedical scientists not acquainted in detail with the progress in this area. Specifically, it contains the essential of two previous monographs by the same author published by Oxford University Press: Placebo effects. Understanding the mechanisms in health and disease (2008), and The patient's brain. The neuroscience behind the doctor-patient relationship (2010). The latter title leads us to the origins of the term placebo, which is mainly known today for its importance in clinical trials on which Evidence Based Medicine is largely founded. But in medical practice, a placebo was (and still often is) a treatment administered by a physician either aware, or unaware, of the absence of any intrinsic therapeutical action. In fact, the "effectiveness" of a placebo is a joint function of the patient's persuasion that treatment really works and the doctor's belief that a treatment supported by reassuring words can have positive effects - hence the importance of the double-blind method in clinical trials and the difficulties in obtaining a reliable result whenever this method cannot be used; or when the experimenters and/or the subjects succeed in decoding the treatment they are administering or receiving
