Meaning, Medicine and the 'Placebo Effect' / Edition 1

by Daniel E. Moerman

Overview

Traditionally, the effectiveness of medical treatments is attributed to specific elements, such as drugs or surgical procedures. However, many other factors can significantly effect the outcome. Drugs with nationally advertised names can work better than the same drug without the name. Inert drugs (placebos, dummies) often have dramatic effects on some patients and effects can vary greatly among different European countries where the "same" medical condition is understood differently. Daniel Moerman traverses a complex subject area in this detailed examination of medical variables. Since 1993, Cambridge Studies in Medical Anthropology has offered researchers and instructors monographs and edited collections of leading scholarship in one of the most lively and popular subfields of cultural and social anthropology. Beginning in 2002, the CSMA series presents theme booksworks that synthesize emerging scholarship from relatively new subfields or that reinterpret the literature of older ones. Designed as course material for advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and for professionals in related areas (physicians, nurses, public health workers, and medical sociologists), these theme books will demonstrate how work in medical anthropology is carried out and convey the importance of a given topic for a wide variety of readers. About 160 pages in length, the theme books are not simply staid reviews of the literature. They are, instead, new ways of conceptualizing topics in medical anthropology that take advantage of current research and the growing edges of the field.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521000871
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	10/17/2002
Series:	Cambridge Studies in Medical Anthropology , #9
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	182
Product dimensions:	6.02(w) x 8.98(h) x 0.59(d)

About the Author

Daniel Moerman is William E. Stirton Professor of Anthropology at The University of Michigan-Dearborn.

Table of Contents

Introduction: 'Pickle ash' and 'High blood'; Part I. The Meaning Response: 1. Healing and medical treatment; 2. The healing process; 3. Measurement and its ambiguities; 4. Doctors and patients; 5. Formal factors and the meaning response; 6. Knowledge and culture; illness and healing; Part II. Applications, Challenges and Opportunities: 7. Psychotherapy: placebo effect or meaning response?; 8. The neurobiology and cultural biology of pain; 9. 'More research is needed': the cases of 'adherence' and 'self-reported health'; 10. Other approaches: learning, expecting and conditioning; 11. Ethics, placebos and meaning; Part III. Meaning and Human Biology: 12. The extent (and limits) of meaning; 13. Conclusions: many claims, many issues.

Editorial Reviews

"Daniel Moerman's Meaning, Medicine and the 'Placebo Effect' is a lucid, accessible look at the power doctors have to restore patients to health with placebos." London Review of Books

"[A]n interesting exploration of the placebo effect.... Recommended." Choice

From the Publisher