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Take Judy Tanaka. Ostensibly the first character proffered up to the reader, Judy hamhandedly announces her role in the book to her therapist in the opening pages: "It's not just a metaphor. Look at me. Don't I remind you of anything?... It doesn't need a genius to see what's going on. Greater London, c'est moi." Fittingly, the city will be the meeting place between Judy and the novel's hero-oid, Mick...
...pathetic negative image of King Midas--everything he touches becomes dull. All the sex that he witnesses or takes part in is at some point described as "athletic," and every character with whom he converses stoops to his moronic level of interaction. Making the book's leading man the reader's worst enemy seldom works to an author's advantage...
...Mind, Brain, and Behavior Initiative, the collection would certainly function well as a supplement to the coursework of any History of Science concentrator. For students of the humanities, Harrington delivers just enough of the promised interdisciplinary exploration to illuminate the placebo mystery without drowning the reader in technical terminology...
Harrington's introduction immediately gives an intriguing definition of the term placebo, which, in addition to being Latin for "I shall please," actually originates in the opening phrase of the Catholic vespers for the dead. This irony alone is enough to sustain the casual reader's curiosity through Harrington's brief historical summary of placebo usage and experimentation that also introduces each of the contributing essayists, who range from Howard Spiro of the Yale School of Medicine to University of California neurobiology professor Howard L. Fields...
Journeying through centuries of placebo usage, the first essay of the book aims to determine whether or not the placebo is "much ado about nothing"; co-authors Arthur Shapiro and his wife Elaine present the reader with a flurry of esoteric yet entertaining historical tidbits. Though the knowledge that the 17th-century drug called "Vigo's plaster" was made of viper's flesh, live frogs, and worms may not necessarily be the best conversation-starter, such detail paints an elaborate portrait of the blind, haphazard healing practices of prescientific medics at which even the least scientifically-inclined person can gasp...