Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun The beneficial effect in a patient following a particular treatment that arises from the patient's expectations concerning the treatment rather than from the treatment itself.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Med.) a reaction by a patient who receives a placebo{2}, in which the symptoms of illness are lessened or an anticipated effect is experienced. Because the placebo{2} itself has no pharmacological activity, this reaction is mediated by the expectations of the patient receiving the placebo{2}; the reaction is considered as an example of the power of suggestion.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun pharmacology The tendency of any
medication ortreatment , even aninert or ineffective one, to exhibit results simply because the recipient believes that it will work.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun any effect that seems to be a consequence of administering a placebo; the change is usually beneficial and is assumed result from the person's faith in the treatment or preconceptions about what the experimental drug was supposed to do; pharmacologists were the first to talk about placebo effects but now the idea has been generalized to many situations having nothing to do with drugs
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