Some say placebos are so powerful they cure almost anything, while others say they barely work. To sceptics, believing in placebos is as irrational as filling the gas tank of your car with Earl Grey tea“ and thinking it will […]
Volunteering to help others feels good and improves our health. But if serving others benefits us aren’t we just being selfish? Is altruism (doing something for others even if we don’t benefit) even possible? Philosopher Thomas Nagel thinks not. To […]
We feel good when we do a good deed, so there must be a psychological benefit to helping others? But how can we know for sure? The best way to study the health benefits of kind deeds is to look […]
A doctor and a lawyer were talking at a party, but they weren’t having fun because people kept interrupting to tell the doctor about their health problems and ask for free medical advice. After a while, the annoyed doctor asked […]
Cure sometimes, treat often, comfort always – Hippocrates The story of Quesalid This is a true story. A hundred years ago a boy called Quesalid lived on Vancouver Island. He had a feeling that shamans tricked people, but he […]
In the early 1970s psychologist Dr. David Rosenhan from Columbia University did a crazy experiment. He took a group of eight ‘normal’ (whatever that means) people, and sent each one to a different psychiatric hospital where they pretended to hear […]
“At any given moment, you have the power to say: This is not how the story is going to end.” – Christine Mason Miller In 2013 Angelina Jolie had her breasts removed after she found out she had a breast […]
Man cannot live by bread alone Clifford and Eva Vevea were ‘hopelessly in love’ for 65 years of marriage and died within hours of each other. Marcus Ringrose died the day after his wife’s funeral. Robert and Nora Viands died […]
Vertebroplasty is a fancy name for making a small cut in someone’s back then injecting bone glue (cement) into a vertebrae that has been damaged. It is used to treat the growing number of people with back pain: in 2003 […]
You are a caveman just back from your very first buffalo hunt. You noticed that the one whose spear hit the buffalo got a high five (or whatever a caveman high five was). You want the next caveman high five […]