Sarah Vine wrote a piece avowing her intention to carry on giving Calpol to her children despite the asthma scare
She refers to it as the pink peril, which reminded me of the old days, when people often emerged from the doctor’s surgery with a bottle of the pink medicine. Which may have been a mild tonic, or a kind & useful way of saying Let’s just wait & see
Or it may have had a powerful placebo effect
An intriguing pair of recent programmes on Radio 4 reported that (serious, scientific) research has established that the effects of pink placebo pills are different from those of the blue ones
And that placebo effects can be dose related: 2 pills good, 3 pills better
One thought provoking document I once came across while looking for something else was a WW2 Whitehall circular to doctors, asking them to be as sparing as possible in the dispensing a long list of imported substances because supplies were likely to run short. The list was surprising – I can only remember one name, tamarind, but all were of that ilk, no modern pharmaceuticals at all
It is so easy to forget how things used to be
When did the last chemist’s shop finally abandon the traditional window display of intriguingly shaped bottles of liquids of various hues labelled with mysterious abbreviations?
Were they all placebo, or is there really more to traditional wisdom than modern science allows?
Is it possible that Calpol works as much through placebo as through the chemical effect?
Which raises the intriguing question of cui bono.
Is it the mother or the infant who gets the benefit?
