Editing Nocebo (section)

==Ambiguity of anthropological usage==
Some people maintain that belief can kill (e.g., [[voodoo death]]: Cannon in 1942 describes a number of instances from a variety of different cultures) and or heal (e.g., [[faith healing]]).{{sfn|Cannon|1942}} A self-willed death (due to voodoo [[curse|hex]], [[evil eye]], [[Kurdaitcha|pointing the bone]] procedure,{{sfn|Zusne|Jones|1989|p=57}}{{sfn|Róheim|1925}} etc.) is an extreme form of a [[culture-specific syndrome]] or [[mass psychogenic illness]] that produces a particular form of [[psychosomatic]] or [[psychophysiological]] disorder resulting in psychogenic death. Rubel in 1964 spoke of "culture-bound" syndromes, those "from which members of a particular group claim to suffer and for which their culture provides an etiology, diagnosis, preventive measures, and regimens of healing".{{sfn|Rubel|1964}}

Certain anthropologists, such as [[Robert A. Hahn|Robert Hahn]] and [[Arthur Kleinman]], have extended the placebo/nocebo distinction into this realm to allow a distinction to be made between rituals, such as faith healing, performed to heal, cure, or bring benefit (placebo rituals) and others, such as "pointing the bone", performed to kill, injure or bring harm (nocebo rituals). As the meaning of the two interrelated and opposing terms has extended, we now find anthropologists speaking, in various contexts, of nocebo or placebo (harmful or helpful) rituals:{{sfn|Hahn|Kleinman|1983}}
* that might entail nocebo or placebo (unpleasant or pleasant) procedures;
* about which subjects might have nocebo or placebo (harmful or beneficial) beliefs;
* that are delivered by operators that might have nocebo or placebo (pathogenic, disease-generating or salutogenic, health-promoting) expectations;
* that are delivered to subjects that might have nocebo or placebo (negative, fearful, despairing or positive, hopeful, confident) expectations about the ritual;
* that are delivered by operators who might have nocebo or placebo (malevolent or benevolent) intentions, in the hope that the rituals will generate nocebo or placebo (lethal, injurious, harmful or restorative, curative, healthy) outcomes; and, that all of this depends upon the operator's overall beliefs in the nocebo ritual's harmful nature or the placebo ritual's beneficial nature.

Yet it may become even more terminologically complex, for as Hahn and Kleinman indicate, there can also be cases of [[paradoxical]] nocebo outcomes from placebo rituals and placebo outcomes from nocebo rituals (see also [[unintended consequence]]s).{{sfn|Hahn|Kleinman|1983}} In 1973, writing from his extensive experience of treating cancer (including more than 1,000 [[melanoma]] cases) at [[Sydney Hospital]], Milton warned of the impact of the delivery of a [[prognosis]], and how many of his patients, upon receiving their prognosis, gave up hope and died a premature death: "there is a small group of patients in whom the realization of impending death is a blow so terrible that they are quite unable to adjust to it, and they die rapidly before the malignancy seems to have developed enough to cause death. This problem of self-willed death is in some ways analogous to the death produced in primitive peoples by witchcraft ('pointing the bone')".{{sfn|Milton|1973}}