Trust: A Novel - LightNovelsOnl.com
You're reading novel online at LightNovelsOnl.com. Please use the follow button to get notifications about your favorite novels and its latest chapters so you can come back anytime and won't miss anything.
OWED TO THE PLACEBO.
("Ho ho," said Mrs. Karp. "Tell them how it's spelled! O-w-e-d, not o-d-e. And don't go calling it doggerel, William-it's too frisky. If you must, call it pupperel. Ho ho, ho ho.") And I said into the air what I saw:
All hail to the placebo,
The mild, delightful, effective placebo!
Sing hoo, sing ray,
Sing night, sing day,
Sing while sitting in the latticed gazebo,
Sing while with alpenstock upon Mount Nebo;
Laurels and praise to the wondrous placebo!
Though the placebo is a pill
For the not-so-ill,
It must never occasion your mirth.
Small is its girth
Yet what on earth
From desert to firth
Can boast the worth
Of this radiant pill
For the not-so-ill?
This homely, familiar, not in the least exotic
Device for the not-very-sick-but-somewhat-neurotic-
("Did your mother's hair really fall out? All of it?" Euphoria, though enraptured, allowed herself to break in.
"A lot of it did," I answered.
"Poor woman! Suffering from one of the ills that mortals fall hair to. Ho ho!" said Euphoria. "Don't stop, don't stop. There's more to read. Ho ho!") I read grimly on.
There are pills which are drugs which have plenty of power
But when you eat them, alas, their taste is sour,
They give you a frown and a scowl and a glower.
But the sweet placebo makes n.o.body cower!
Of invisible strength it's a veritable tower!
How sly the placebo, how subtly deceiving:
It only pretends, but succeeds, in relieving,
For its recondite force, whether medical or dental,
Lies just in this fact: that it's nothing but mental.
If we hadn't the placebo for the hypochondriacal
The whole world would soon go quickly maniacal!
So you patients who are found to be fit as a fiddle,
You patients whose ailment's an insoluble riddle,
