Essay - An Experiment in Mind and Body Re: Chapter 11 of...

An Experiment in Mind and Body re: Chapter 11 of Phantoms in the Brain

Many a patient with a tumor pronounced malignant has outlived his physician," notes V.S Ramachandran in his book Phantoms ***** the *****, through the sheer mental force ***** the patient's will. To what extent can the mental powers of the human mind affect the body's ability to heal? The extraordinary cases chronicled by ***** physician hold hope in limit*****g the spread of cancer and also to treat affectations of ***** autoimmune system, such as lupus, for example.

But how to design an experiment from the ***** experiences of a few individuals? How to create a st*****ard medical prescription ***** the extraordinary? One possible suggestion would be to take a group ***** individuals afflicted by such an immune disorder, *****d to attempt ***** condition temporary improvements or remissions in their ailment to a physical response that could be replicated, even when they were not feeling well. For instance, ***** a patient suffering in the early stages of lupus or MS (both *****s' sufferers typically have 'good days' and 'bad *****), one ***** ask the patient to wear a particular fabric aga*****st their skin, or to play a ***** song when the ***** was ***** relaxed and reasonably well and symptom-free. ***** the purposes ***** the experiment, this would have to be d***** with ***** relatively new to the ailment, whose bodies had a strong som*****tic memory of what *****th was like.

Then, on bad days, ***** same physical stimulus would ***** applied to the patient, ***** attempt to replicate the same sensory feelings of health that he or she experienced ***** one of his or her 'good days.' Another possibility might be to give the patient a food or a bottle ***** scent with no affect on the *****, but produced a distinct physical effect—such as garlic ***** a strong-smelling ointment, that could be associated with the mind ***** body with *****. An added, though not necessarily ethically feasible component ***** the experiment might be to tell the patient that the scent or food was 'healing' to see if this additionally provoked somatic as well as psychological healing in ***** body over time.

If such ***** did ***** a state of remission at an increased rate, in comparison ***** a control group, as ***** ***** a physical sense ***** greater well *****ing, it might suggest that the body can *****ly heal *****self from some ailments ***** as autoimmune disorders where ***** body attacks itself, as opposed to ***** when outer pathogens such ***** bacteria attack the body and almost always require medicine. If the physical amelioration ***** be measured over time as appreciably better, rather than simply create a *****, conditioned sense of *****rt*****icial wellness, the Ramachandran's thesis might well *****