Two books by Jo Marchant

About 2023, I read “Cure” by Jo Marchant and I liked it very much.  Recently, I saw that her book “In Search of Now” came out.  I could use the more recent wording and say that her book dropped but I don’t feel comfortable with that. I like Kindle ebooks since they take up no noticeable room, are weightless and are delivered immediately over the Internet.  Another feature is that a reader can mark impressive passages and all of them form a file that can be searched, sent to a friend or oneself.  Amazon makes it clear when I look up a book that I once bought it and supplies the date of purchase.

Possibly the logical, scientific and personal aspects of the subject of now simply don’t hit me the way aspects of the mind and its medical influences do.  Whatever, we stopped my reading Now and switched to Cure.  The sub-title of Cure is “A Journey into the Science of Mind over Body” but the text focuses on mind over body in medical matters.  So, the subject of placebos comes up.  A typical way of testing a medicine is to give it to a group and give some inert fake, the placebo, to another group of people and see how the groups compare.

Generally, the medicine and the fake are delivered under cover so people are not aware of which they got.  I learned about “honest placebos” where people getting the fake treatment are informed they are not getting the medicine being tested.  There are cases where placebo group members know they received a fake but feel benefitted anyhow and request another dose.