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The term placebo appeared around the 13th century and it was derived from the Latin for ‘I shall please’ (http:// www.etymonline.com/). Initially this is how the placebo worked - it was a substance or a product that was given to patients in order to please them and their need to be healed rather than actually cure them. Such a way of ’deceiving’ patients for their own sake was known already in the Middle Ages, when doctors adminis-tered their patients medicines such as powdered lizard's taił, or weird herbal infusions to be drunk while a cock crows..And the patients, trusting in the effectweness of these therapies happened to get better.fin the middle of the twentieth century the word ‘placebo’ shifted to its present meaningof a medicine or medical procedurę that is effective thanks to the patienfs perception and will, and not its actual Chemical composition or physiological effectjPlacebos can have a number of vanous forms - they can be (http: //en.wikipedia.org):

• sham pills. creams or iniections • medical deyices (such as an ultrasound scanner) which are not switched on while being used • surgery that involves only superfi-cial incisions

• doctors themselves! It has been dis-covered that a doctor’s positive words about the treatment administered can bring an improvement in health while the physician's doubts can contribute t<2 poorer results of a therapy.

While a hundred years ago doctors gave their patients placebos without telling them just because they had nothing better and they saw that in this way people recoyered morę ef-fectively than when told they did not need any drugs, currently the placebo effect is an important part of medical research. It has been discovered that placebos actually have the power of inducing brain activity that influences the physical condition of patients. This phenomenon emphasizes the significance of brain activity in physical health. For instance, Canadian researchers, while testingthe placebo effect on patients with acute deores-sion. discovered that those who re-ceived sham pills instead of Prozac got better due to the fact that the hope of improvement triggered the production of serotonin - a neurotransmitter re-sponsible for good moods. Results of other studies also showed that groups of patients who received placebos instead of the promised drug often recoyered as well as the groups that were treated with ‘real’ medicines, as if their brains programmed them-selves to recover. Thus, researchers believe that the placebo effect trig-gers a kind of self-healing power in the human body.

According to doctors, the placebo effect is particularly spectacular in ►

to heal - leczyć, zagoić to cure - leczyć to deceive - oszukiwać forsb’s own sake - dla czyjegoś własnego dobra

to administer - podać, zaordynować powdered lizard’stail - sproszkowany ogon jaszczurki

herbal infusion - napar ziołowy to crow - piać

patients happened to get better - zdarzało się, że pacjenci zdrowieli to Shift - zmienić, przenieść się will - wola

Chemical composition - skład chemiczny

sham - lipny, fikcyjny

injection - zastrzyk

device - urządzenie

ultrasound scanner - ultrasonograf

to switch on - włączyć

surgery - operacja

superficial incision - powierzchowne nacięcie

to contribute to sth - przyczynić się do

to recover - wyzdrowieć

currently - obecnie

to induce - wywołać

to emphasize - podkreślać

significance - znaczenie

acute depression - ostra depresja

due to - z powodu

to trigger - wywołać

serotonin - serotonina

neurotransmitter - neuroprzekaźnik

to treat - leczyć