Meaning, Medicine and the 'Placebo Effect'

'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

'Daniel Moerman wrote a very readably book. in plain English he describes the otherwise mostly statistically stated outcomes of experiments … it makes some of its chapters very useful for introductory courses. The book is also very useful for everyone who needs to 'break' through the pharmaceutical paradigm … it is all in all a beautiful book …'. Medische Antropologie: Tijdschrift over Gezondheid en Cultuur

'… fascinating … entertaining and accessible … I would recommend it to anyone who knows that there is more to pharmacology than just pharmacology and would like to try to understand why.' Pharmaceutical Physician

'… [this] recent volume in the Cambridge Studies in Medical Anthropology series [is an] important contribution to the study of medicines, not only for medical anthropologists, but for anybody who wants to understand what medicines do and how they do what they do … it is a testament to the book's quality that it raised many unanswered questions.' Journal of Biosocial Science

'This slim, engagingly written book attempts to replace the concept of 'placebo effect' … with a related one, 'meaning effect' … The book's conversational and chatty writing style … appears designed to appeal to an undergraduate audience. … Whether or not one accepts 'the meaning effect' as a novel or useful concept, the book is worth a read, and read critically is likely to provoke good classroom discussion.' Journal of the royal Anthropological Institute

'The wealth of experiments reported in this book demonstrate that medicine effects healing in many more ways than through active pharmaceutical ingredients… informative and entertaining…' Journal of Biological Science