Reply #5: I saw the process a lot when I was a nurse

[Warpy]

and I'd need to give several IV push meds in series, one of which was IV morphine. I'd tell the patient I'd do the morphine first, and the patient would begin to relax immediately. It didn't matter what order I actually pushed the drugs (and many needed to be given in specific order), the expectation was there and so was the effect. Sometimes I'd see the effect before I even began to push a drug in.

The problem with this is that it doesn't work on everybody, a phenomenon I also observed. There was no way to predict who was susceptible and who was not. People who were susceptible one day were not the next, although this was rarer.

The body/mind connection is a very real one, but one we are only in the infancy of understanding. We don't as yet know how to harness or control it, nor even predict it.

However, it's keeping untold thousands of quacks in their BMWs.