Shorter Oxford Dictionary Research Articles

The placebo response.

In recent controlled trials, conducted by the authors (1956), we were interested to note the proportion of patients improving with the administration of placebos. A placebo is defined in the Shorter Oxford Dictionary (1944) as “A medicine given more to please than to benefit the patient”. It is presumed that, implicit in this definition, is the qualification that the doctor is aware of the relatively inert qualities of the substance, whilst the patient is not. There is, of course, a type of patient who derives considerable benefit mainly by virtue of the fact that he has been pleased. In spite of the discovery of increasing numbers of drugs with specific properties, the prescription of placebos is still common practice. Dunlop et al. (1952) analysed over 17,000 prescriptions of which about one-third were tonics, stomachics or sedatives; although barbiturates cannot strictly be called placebos, the spirit in which they are prescribed frequently puts them near to this category.

The powerful placebo.

Placebos have doubtless been used for centuries by wise physicians as well as by quacks, but it is only recently that recognition of an enquiring kind has been given the clinical circumstance where the use of this tool is essential ... to distinguish pharmacological effects from the effects of suggestion, and... to obtain an unbiased assessment of the result of experiment. It is interesting that Pepper could say as recently as 10 years ago apparently there has never been a paper published discussing [primarily] the important subject of the placebo. In 1953 Gaddum1said: Such tablets are sometimes called placebos, but it is better to call them dummies. According to the Shorter Oxford Dictionary the word placebo has been used since 1811 to mean a medicine given more to please than to benefit the patient. Dummy tablets are not particularly noted for the pleasure which they give to their recipients.

The Stoic View of Life

ONE of more curious facts about that western civilisation which has its roots in Greece, Rome, and Palestine is way in which two radically opposed philosophies of life, Stoic and Christian, have not only co-existed within but have even managed to conceal their basic incompatibility. A glance at dictionary should be sufficient to arouse suspicion. According to Shorter Oxford Dictionary, adjective stoical means resembling a Stoic in austerity, indifference, fortitude, repression of feeling and like. The same authority informs us that adjective means following precepts or example of Christ, or, in its colloquial sense, human, civilised, decent, respectable. Only a lover of paradox is likely to suggest that terms 'human, civilised, decent, and respectable' have much in common with 'austerity, indifference and like.' If adjective be taken in its stricter sense would appear to have even less in common with adjective stoical. The fundamental precepts of Christianity engage us to love God and our neighbour. Indifference and repression of feeling and like are hardly fit team-mates for love of any kind. When two adjectives, and set of ideas which they symbolise, are taken together, is difficult to imagine how anyone could have thought of linking them in same team. It is not without a mild shock that we find a German writer (Bonhoeffer)1 asserting that Stoicism was a powerful preparation for Christianity. When we further recollect that has been customary to think and speak of European civilisation as essentially Chiistian, we are even more likely to be taken aback on reading statement by John Macmurray in his Freedom in Modern World that the part that Stoicism has played in creation of European civilisation can hardly be overestimated. Speaking of sentiments expressed by a reputed Christian priest in Measure for Measure, C. C. J. Webb in his History of Philosophy remarks that it is to be remembered that what may be called conventional Christianity of educated men owes more than is always acknowledged to Stoicism of Seneca. It adjectives and stoical mean what dictionary suggests, then statement that European civilisation is both Christian and deeply influenced by Stoicism requires explanation. Clearly is not possible for a man to be both a Stoic and a Christian. Is any more possible for a civilisation to combine what is by nature incompatible? A hard-hitting nineteenth-century ecclesiastical scholar offered an explanation which certainly demands investigation, and, if true, perhaps

The Value of the Creative Faculty in Man

What is the nature of Man—“Quid est homo? … Constituisti eum super omnia opera manuum tuarum.” In what is this superiority? “I have said you are gods.” In what way are men as gods? What do we know of God? Credo in Deum … creatorem coeli et terrae. Creatorem—what does create mean? The Shorter Oxford Dictionary says: to bring into being; to cause to exist; to form out of nothing; to originate.Now the existence of anything is dependent upon four causes. Take for example this table, (I) There is something that makes tables tables and not candlesticks; this kind of thing, not another kind. But, further, as an individual thing: this particular table and not that; a table like this one and not like that one—what makes tables tables, and this particular table this particular shape is the formal cause and without that cause this table would not exist.