As a woman is hypnotised into believing she's had surgery: Yes, the power of the mind can heal your body



We often take the link between our mind and body for granted, yet in truth it is one of the least understood phenomena in the whole of science.

Take the strange case of Marion Corns.



Last week, it was reported that Mrs Corns, who is from Merseyside, allowed herself to be hypnotised after becoming obese.



Only make believe: Marion before and after the hypnotherapy in which she was led to believe she had been fitted with a gastric band

After trying the usual diets and exercise regimes with no success, she travelled to a clinic in Spain where she was put into an altered state of consciousness and then 'talked through', in step-by-step detail, the procedure for a drastic weight-loss operation.

Mrs Corns did not actually go under the knife.



But under hypnosis she was told she had been fitted with a gastric band - a device which constricts the stomach, dramatically reducing the amount that can be eaten.

Although she was fully aware that no band had been fitted, something in her brain seemed to believe otherwise, and she lost four stone - exactly the sort of weight loss that could be expected if a band had been fitted.

So what on earth is going on? Can the mind be fooled to such an extent that it can 'fake' the effects of a major surgical procedure? And, if so, could it provide

the path to a whole new kind of medicine - one in which pills and scalpels can be replaced by the power of mental suggestion?

The strange case of Mrs Corns certainly looks like a clear victory for those who claim that 'alternative' treatments, into which category hypnosis is often lumped, are often as effective, or better, than conventional Western medicine. But can this really be the case?

For a long time, hypnotism has been dismissed by many as stageshow trickery. Yet what is often forgotten is that at the dawn of modern medicine, the technique promised a tremendous - and real - breakthrough as a form of anaesthesia.

Look into my eyes: Hypnotism led to the sort of weight loss that Marion Corns would have experienced if she had had a gastric band

Scottish doctor James Braid coined the term 'hypnotism' in 1841 after studying relaxation and meditation techniques used in Oriental medicine and Eastern religious practice.

At the same time, another Scot, Dr James Esdaile, was performing 'miracles' in India using techniques akin to hypnotism to calm his patients during surgical procedures.

A physician employed by the East India Company, Dr Esdaile used the technique to perform, painlessly, hundreds of operations, including the removal of tumours, amputations and even emergency castrations.

This was a time when even simple operations were akin to torture and patients who did not die of septicemia stood a good chance of succumbing to shock.



Post-operative survival rates were usually less than 50 per cent.

But, thanks to Esdaile's ability to relax patients and put them into hypnotic trances, his success rates were closer to 80per cent for some operations.



The world stood on the brink of a new era of pain-free surgery.



But the 1840s was also the time when the first chemical anaesthetics were being pioneered.



And the success of conventional drugs such as chloroform and ether made sure the quirkier technique of hypnotism was consigned to the footnotes of medical history.

Today, hypnotism is undergoing something of a revival. It has become a respectable treatment for some forms of mental illness, including anxiety and depression.

Hypnotists have helped thousands of people lose weight and stop smoking, as well as helping to relieve the pain of cancer, wounds and burns.



There is some clinical evidence that hypnosis can be used to treat seemingly 'physical' conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome and the skin condition psoriasis.



Hypnotherapy: There is some clinical evidence that the treatment can work with certain conditions

Hypnotism doesn't work for everyone. But, then again, neither do many drugs.

You don't have to be hypnotised for your mind to play tricks on your body.



Another well-known phenomenon of the mind's curious control over matter is the placebo effect.



This is where a patient is told they are undergoing a treatment, when, in fact, the treatment is a sham.

For example, instead of taking an active painkiller, they may be given tablets containing only chalk.



What is so extraordinary about the placebo effect is how powerful it is.



Significant numbers of people in severe pain reported immediate relief when given fake analgesics.

In experiments, people become 'drunk' on placebo (non-alcoholic) drinks and jittery on placebo (decaffeinated) coffee.

In one study, patients who'd had a tooth extracted and were in pain had salt water squirted into their mouths, being told it was a powerful anaesthetic.



The effect was found to be as potent as a sizeable dose of morphine.

Placebos do not work for everyone - and the effect is non-existent in the very young and the senile - but they do demonstrate that the mind has an extraordinary capacity to control physical symptoms.

But if the placebo is bizarre, the 'nocebo' effect, is downright sinister.



Dubbed 'placebo's evil twin', the nocebo effect happens when negative expectations produce harmful, real-life effects.

In one extraordinary example from the Seventies, an American patient was diagnosed with cancer and given just months to live.



He duly died in the allotted time frame - but the autopsy revealed the doctors had made a mistake: there was no cancer.

According to Clifton Meader, a doctor from Tennessee who has studied the nocebo effect: 'He didn't die from cancer, but from believing he was dying of cancer'.

The nocebo effect explains the extraordinary power of occult or voodoo medicine.



Witch doctors in the American Deep South and the Caribbean use voodoo 'magic' to put curses on people and convince them they will die.



To the astonishment of medical science, they often do.

And voodoo is not limited to the forests of Haiti.



Many patients who suffer harmful side- effects from treatments such as chemotherapy may do so only because they have been told to expect them.



Equally, surgeons are often, quite rightly, wary of operating on people who think they will die - because they so often do.

Even being told you are in a 'high-risk' group for a certain cancer, heart disease or stroke seems to increase your chances of getting these conditions.

So what are we to make of all this? Does this show that modern medicine is a sham and we need to go back to the drawing board when it comes to our understanding of the human body?

First, we must recognise that the term 'alternative medicine' is misleading.



There is medicine which works - and medicine which does not.



And if hypnotism and placebos 'work', then these effects must be part of medicine.

And as for homeopathy, crystal healing and the rest, these 'therapies' are undoubtedly shams, insofar as trial after trial has failed to show they cure anything.



But that's not to say they cannot work.



This is not a paradox: once again, the mind can control the body.

If you are feeling ill, a visit to your GP will often result in a short, bad-tempered consultation and a prescription.



Visit a homeopath and you will be faced with a kindly person, happy to listen to your woes.

Given that it is possible to persuade someone, through the power of suggestion, to lose four stone - or that the imminent removal of their leg or testicle will not hurt - is it really so surprising that sometimes even a homeopath can make the worried-well happier?



The mind can, indeed, perform miracles.