The effect of placebo on our neuropsychology is a very interesting topic. The online dictionary defines placebo as n. pl. pla·ce·bos or pla·ce·boes

1.

a. A substance containing no medication and prescribed or given to reinforce a patient's expectation to get well.

b. An inactive substance or preparation used as a control in an experiment or test to determine the effectiveness of a medicinal drug.

2. Something of no intrinsic remedial value that is used to appease or reassure another.

3. (plä-chb) Roman Catholic Church The service or office of vespers for the dead.

I only studied rudimentary science as part of a degree, though in medicine, I read a few articles about who placebos were used to control experiment. If a drug being tested performed better than a placebo, generally speaking, it was thought to be clinically effective.

The other side to this research is how placebo actually work on the brain. Researchers have found that when applying a non medicated cream, which they (falsely) said had pain relieving qualities, people still found that their pain was relieved, and opoid-like neurochemicals were released in the brains of the patients.

It is simply a trick! But it works! And it has observable chemical/physical consequences, people actually feel better. But how many different types of this trick have been played on us throughout the ages?

I can hear people saying well the pain wasnt real, it was all in the mind (or brain) anyway? If we had no central nervous system we wouldnt feel any pain at all! All pain is in the brain, that is where we process our response to the stimuli.

Relating this to the psychological sociological phenomena of human religion is fascinating. My main observations of religion, as well as various intellectual adventures, has been of fundamentalist charismatic, churches like the Assemblies of God. Why? For a start they usually have some modern music, which i enjoy - but also they are the most accessible to me in terms of my own ethnographic location. Put simply they are there for me to easily to observe.

When a congregation member is sick, they come to perhaps an altar call, and after a period of worship (which is in itself brain altering, causing usually a great deal of enthusiasm and often euphoria). Anyway the sick person explains themselves to the pastor or elder, and the pastor will "lay his hands" upon the sick person, praying audibly that the power of the holy spirit will heal this sick person. Often the church community will gather around the sick person, all touching the sick person. All showing in my experience genuine love, compassion or even grief or woe, that the person is so affected, all of them convinced that the holy spirit flows through them.

This sick person is convinced, by faith that the holy spirit of god, can heal him or her, and that the maybe the pastor or a congregation member has a special gift of healing. Can you see how the placebo effect works here? By convincing themselves they are healed, they emit neurochemical responses in their brain. So long as they stay within the paradigm of their beliefs, they are healed, or at least the pain goes away for a while.

By my observation, most of the healing are things that can be healed psychosomatically, like back pain. But I have heard of cancers being healed. I have never seen cancers being healed. I personally tried to have my own paralysed arm healed, and although my paralysed arm is a result of neurological dysfunction, believing that my arm would be healed would, because of the break in the nerve junction of the brachial plexus, have been as effective as trying to move MT Everest to Australia with my Telekinesis abilities, it would never happen, just like my old mate stumpy would never grow his legs back, with "Faith Healing". Growing back an amputated leg is not physically possible for humans yet. But placebos are physically possible.

But just think what these church goers do for their sick friend, they Touch them, human touch can be very be very healing and loving on its own.What parent doesnt know that a kiss will often make it better? These church goers also tell each other and especially the sick person they are loved and appreciated, and sometimes will build the sick person up with "exhortations", i.e letting the person know that they are good and what they are good at.

Placebos are powerful. They cant do the impossible.

Goth Goulburn

You want Australian Gothic? Goulburn has got it. This page should be read to Nick Cave's murder ballads.

In 1833 two criminals White and Mooney were still hanging from the gibbet on the corner of Faithfull and Bradley street, the old police station. Their bleached bones that had been hanging there for 3 years so horrified the sensitive wife of the Guv'nor, that she fainted and the Guv'nor ordered them taken down. She was of course of a Pom of the aristocratic classes.

Convictism started Goulburn, Convictism still supports Goulburn. Goulburn has the biggest, nastiest and meanest jail ( GAOL ) in Australia. The warders love to send the crims into the cell where the condemned men spent their last night, next to the still existing gallows. Apparently a night in the condemned cell is enough to send a crim insane. The warders will tell you this with a bit of a black chuckle.

Why is it that the all the crows gather in the morning round the watch towers, when there has been a suicide or murder in the cells that night? You can hear them caw and ark above the razor wire as you look from St. Saviours cemetery. Crows find the road kill and peck out the eyes first, so can they tell when someone dies, are they sensitive to the spiritual, are they hungry for a crim's eyes, or is it all non scientific garbage?

Personally idon't think Goulburn gives a flying phuq whether people visit or not, tour or not. Yes people enjoy their town, love it, i love it, but its about friends and family, not uber tourism. I tried creating an art gallery for tourists, because we have some great artists here and a great little art school at TAFE, but no one wanted to know except the locals who were loyal to me, and bought some great local art

I reckon we should dig up Bishop Mesac and crush his bones and sell tiny vials of Bishop boness off to the religous tourists as relics. Well the catholics did it centuries ago, good old fashioned capitalism.

Whaddya fink?

Stu