Healing Words: The Power of Prayer and the Practice of Medicine
by Larry Dossey
"Physicians can exert powerful effects through their beliefs. If they strongly favor a therapy, they can 'talk up' its effects to the patient. This enthusiastic cheerleading can inflate patients' expectations and set the stage for dramatic placebo responses, even though the therapy itself may be inherently ineffective."
"What do we really know about the place of love in healing? What can we say without undue fear of contradiction? We can demonstrate experimentally that love, compassion, caring, and empathy catalyze healing events, and that this power operates at a distance and outside of time. But we also know that love is compatible with illness — in the same sense in which Jesus said, 'Love your enemies' not 'Don't have any.' Love occupies a majestic place in healing, it is a living tissue of reality, a bond that unites us all."