FLOW

This is an interesting story:

Doctors in Texas studying the effect of arthroscopic knee surgery, assigned patients with sore, worn-out kees to one of three surgical procedures: scraping out the knee joint, washing out the joint, or doing nothing.

During the “nothing” operation, doctors anesthetized the patient, made three incisions in the knee as if to insert their surgical instruments, and then pretended to operate. Two years after surgery, patients who underwent the pretend surgery reported the same amount of relief from pain and swelling as those who had received the actual treatments. The brain “expected” the surgery to work and it did.