Kaptchuk Archives
Ted Kaptchuk is one of the pioneers of Chinese medicine in the West and has a forty year association with Kan Herb Company as an herbal formulator. For the last thirty years he has been primarily occupied as a researcher, scholar, and teacher at Harvard Medical school mostly focused on placebo effects, and, secondarily, on East Asian medicine, acupuncture, and methodology. He is a Professor of Medicine and Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine.
Ted has published over 300 peer-reviewed publications. They have not been easily available to the TCM community. Kan Herbs has recently received a trove of his publications with permission to disseminate to the profession. As a courtesy to Kan's customers and to the community in general, we have decided to send out one of his papers each month. Please register for Kan's e-news to get these updates. Attached is a sample publication. Your name will never be shared with anyone and you can remove your name anytime and it will not be shared.
History of Placebo Research - Part 2
Part 2 of Ted Kaptchuk's essay on the history of placebo controls picks up where Part 1 left off, tracing how blind assessment migrated from alternative and unorthodox medicine into its very core of mainstream medicine. Beginning with late nineteenth-century debates over hypnotism and suggestion, the story moves through German pharmacology, the diphtheria antitoxin trials, and Harry Gold's pivotal 1937 angina experiments—culminating in the post-World War II marriage of blind assessment with R. A. Fisher's randomized design that gave us the modern RCT. Kaptchuk's striking conclusion: biomedicine's "gold standard" was built on logic and tools first forged in its battles between unconventional and "orthodox" healers and, a history that mainstream medicine has largely forgotten.
History of Placebo Research - Part 1
This fascinating historical essay by Ted Kaptchuk traces the surprisingly long history of placebo controls in medicine, revealing that what we think of as a modern research method actually originated more than two centuries ago—starting with Benjamin Franklin's 1784 investigation of mesmerism. Besides being used as a tool in tug-of-war between orthodox and unorthodox medicine, placebo controls were adopted by complementary healing traditions well before biomedicine. Alternative medicine actually pioneered placebos. This paper on “intentional ignorance” puts complementary medicine back into the picture of how science was created. The publication is long but an easy read.
Placebo & IBS
A fascinating BMJ study of IBS patients found that the placebo effect isn’t just “all in your head” — it grows stronger when simple observation is layered with a treatment ritual and, most of all, a warm and attentive clinician. In fact, patients who received placebo care delivered with empathy and confidence improved at rates comparable to many active medications, underscoring how powerful the human side of medicine can be. The placebo in this trial was sham acupuncture which is controversial; future studies in this Archives series will dissect the differences between placebo pills and sham acupuncture.
Gold Standard or Golden Calf?
Though an older publication, this paper remains highly relevant. Titled “The double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial: Gold standard or golden calf?” and published in the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, it offers a thoughtful critique of the limitations and assumptions underlying randomized trials. We’ve included the article here for your review and enjoyment.
Ted Kaptchuk's Most Recent Article - Exclusively on kanherb.com
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Ted KaptchukProfessor of Medicine, Harvard University and author of The Web That Has no Weaver: Understanding Chinese Medicine
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