Sam Londe, a retired shoe salesman living outside of St. Louis in the early 1970s, began to have difficulty swallowing.1 He eventually went to see a doctor, who discovered that Londe had metastatic esophageal cancer. In those days, metastatic esophageal cancer was considered incurable; no one had ever survived it. It was a death sentence, and Londe’s doctor delivered the news in an appropriately somber tone.
To give Londe as much time as possible, the doctor recommended surgery to remove the cancerous tissue in the esophagus and in the stomach, where the cancer had spread. Trusting the doctor, Londe agreed and had the surgery. He came through as well as could be expected, but things soon went from bad to worse. A scan of Londe’s liver revealed still more bad news: extensive cancer throughout the liver’s entire left lobe. The doctor told Londe that sadly, at best, he had only months to live.
So Londe and his new wife, both in their 70s, arranged to move 300 miles to Nashville, where Londe’s wife had family. Soon after the move to Tennessee, Londe was admitted to the hospital and assigned to internist Clifton Meador. The first time Dr. Meador walked into Londe’s room, he found a small, unshaven man curled up underneath a mound of covers, looking nearly dead. Londe was gruff and uncommunicative, and the nurses explained that he’d been like that since his admission a few days before.
While Londe had high blood-glucose levels due to diabetes, the rest of his blood chemistry was fairly normal except for slightly higher levels of liver enzymes, which was to be expected of someone with liver cancer. Further medical examination showed nothing more amiss, a blessing considering the patient’s desperate condition. Under his new doctor’s orders, Londe begrudgingly received physical therapy, a fortified liquid diet, and lots of nursing care and attention. After a few days, he grew a little stronger, and his grumpiness started to subside. He began talking to Dr. Meador about his life.
Londe had been married before, and he and his first wife had been true soul mates. They had never been able to have children but otherwise had had a good life. Because they loved boating, when they retired they had bought a house by a large man-made lake. Then late one night, the nearby earthen dam burst, and a wall of water crushed their house and swept it away. Londe miraculously survived by hanging on to some wreckage, but his wife’s body was never found.
“I lost everything I ever cared for,” he told Dr. Meador. “My heart and soul were lost in the flood that night.”
Within six months of his first wife’s death, while still grieving and in the depths of depression, Londe had been diagnosed with esophageal cancer and had had the surgery. It was then that he had met and married his second wife, a kind woman who knew about his terminal illness and agreed to care for him in the time he had left. A few months after they married, they made the move to Nashville, and Dr. Meador already knew the rest of the story.
Once Londe finished the story, the doctor, amazed by what he’d just heard, asked with compassion, “What do you want me to do for you?” The dying man thought for a while.
“I’d like to live through Christmas so I can be with my wife and her family. They’ve been good to me,” he finally answered. “Just help me make it through Christmas. That’s all I want.” Dr. Meador told Londe he would do his best.
By the time Londe was discharged in late October, he was actually in much better shape than when he had arrived. Dr. Meador was surprised but pleased by how well Londe was doing. The doctor saw his patient about once a month after that, and each time, Londe looked good. But exactly one week after Christmas (on New Year’s Day), Londe’s wife brought him back to the hospital.
Dr. Meador was surprised to find that Londe again looked near death. All he could find was a mild fever and a small patch of pneumonia on Londe’s chest x-ray, although the man didn’t seem to be in any respiratory distress. All of Londe’s blood tests looked good, and the cultures the doctor ordered for him came back negative for any other disease. Dr. Meador prescribed antibiotics and put his patient on oxygen, hoping for the best, but within 24 hours, Sam Londe was dead.
As you might assume, this story is about a typical cancer diagnosis followed by an unfortunate death from a fatal disease, right?
Not so fast.
A funny thing happened when the hospital performed Londe’s autopsy. The man’s liver was, in fact, not filled with cancer; he had only a very tiny nodule of cancer in its left lobe and another very small spot on his lung. The truth is, neither cancer was big enough to kill him. And in fact, the area around his esophagus was totally free of disease as well. The abnormal liver scan taken at the St. Louis hospital had apparently yielded a false positive result.
Sam Londe didn’t die of esophageal cancer, nor did he die of liver cancer. He also didn’t die of the mild case of pneumonia he had when he was readmitted to the hospital. He died, quite simply, because everybody in his immediate environment thought he was dying. His doctor in St. Louis thought Londe was dying, and then Dr. Meador, in Nashville, thought Londe was dying. Londe’s wife and family thought he was dying, too. And, most important, Londe himself thought he was dying. Is it possible that Sam Londe died from thought alone? Is it possible that thought is that powerful? And if so, is this case unique?
Can You Overdose on a Placebo?
Twenty-six-year-old graduate student Fred Mason (not his real name) became depressed when his girlfriend broke up with him.2 He saw an ad for a clinical trial of a new antidepressant medication and decided to enroll. He’d had a bout of depression four years previously, at which time his doctor prescribed the antidepressant amitriptyline (Elavil), but Mason had been forced to stop the medication when he became excessively drowsy and developed numbness. He had felt the drug was too strong for him and now hoped the new drug would have fewer side effects.
After he’d been in the study for about a month, he decided to call his ex-girlfriend. The two of them argued on the phone, and after Mason hung up, he impulsively grabbed his bottle of pills from the trial and swallowed all 29 that were left in the container, attempting suicide. He immediately repented. Running into the hallway of his apartment building, Mason desperately called out for help and then collapsed on the floor. A neighbor heard his cry and found him on the ground.
Writhing, he told his neighbor he’d made a terrible mistake, that he had taken all his pills but didn’t really want to die. When he asked the neighbor to take him to the hospital, she agreed. When Mason got to the emergency room, he was pale and sweating, and his blood pressure was 80/40 with a pulse rate of 140. Breathing rapidly, he kept repeating, “I don’t want to die.”
When the doctors examined him, they found nothing wrong other than his low blood pressure, rapid pulse, and rapid breathing. Even so, he seemed lethargic, and his speech was slurred. The medical team inserted an IV and hooked it up to a saline drip, took samples of Mason’s blood and urine, and asked what drug he’d taken. Mason couldn’t remember the name.
He told the doctors it was an experimental antidepressant drug that was part of a trial. He then handed them the empty bottle, which indeed had information about the clinical trial printed on the label, although not the name of the drug. There was nothing to do but wait for the lab results, monitor his vital signs to make sure he didn’t take a turn for the worse, and hope that the hospital staff could contact the researchers who were conducting the trial.
Four hours later, after the results of the lab tests came back totally normal, a physician who had been part of the clinical drug trial arrived. Checking the code on the label of Mason’s empty pill bottle, the researcher looked into the records for the trial. He announced that Mason had actually been taking a placebo and that the pills he’d swallowed contained no drugs at all. Miraculously, Mason’s blood pressure and pulse returned to normal within a few minutes. And as if by magic, he was no longer excessively drowsy either. Mason had fallen victim to the nocebo: a harmless substance that, thanks to strong expectations, causes harmful effects.
Is it really possible that Mason’s symptoms had been brought on solely because that’s what he’d expected to happen from swallowing a huge handful of antidepressants? Could Mason’s mind, as in the case of Sam Londe, have taken control of his body, driven by expectations of what seemed to be the most probable future scenario, to the extent that he made that scenario real? Could that happen even if that meant his mind would have to take control of functions not normally under conscious control? And if that were possible, could it also be true that if our thoughts can make us sick, we also have the ability to use our thoughts to make us well?
Chronic Depression Magically Lifts
Janis Schonfeld, a 46-year-old interior designer living in California, had suffered with depression since she was a teenager. She’d never sought help with the condition until she saw a newspaper ad in 1997. The UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute was looking for volunteer subjects for a drug trial to test a new antidepressant called venlafaxine (Effexor). Schonfeld, whose depression had escalated to the point where the wife and mother had actually entertained thoughts of suicide, jumped at the chance to be part of the trial.
When Schonfeld arrived at the institute for the first time, a technician hooked her up to an electroencephalograph (EEG) to monitor and record her brain-wave activity for about 45 minutes, and not long after that, Schonfeld left with a bottle of pills from the hospital pharmacy. She knew that roughly half the group of 51 subjects would be getting the drug, and half would receive a placebo, although neither she nor the doctors conducting the study had any idea which group she had been randomly assigned to. In fact, no one would know until the study was over. But at the time, that hardly mattered to Schonfeld. She was excited and hopeful that after decades of battling clinical depression, a condition that would cause her to sometimes suddenly burst into tears for no apparent reason, she might finally be getting help.
Schonfeld agreed to return every week for the entire eight weeks of the study. On each occasion, she’d answer questions about how she was feeling, and several times, she sat through yet another EEG. Not long after she started taking her pills, Schonfeld began feeling dramatically better for the first time in her life. Ironically, she also felt nauseated, but that was good news because she knew that nausea was one of the common side effects of the drug being tested. She thought that she surely must have gotten the active drug if her depression was lifting and she was also experiencing side effects. Even the nurse she spoke to when she returned every week was convinced Schonfeld must be getting the real thing because of the changes she was experiencing.
Finally, at the end of the eight-week study, one of the researchers revealed the shocking truth: Schonfeld, who was no longer suicidal and felt like a new person after taking the pills, had actually been in the placebo group. Schonfeld was floored. She was sure the doctor had made a mistake. She simply didn’t believe that she could have felt so much better after so many years of suffocating depression simply from taking a bottle of sugar pills. And she’d even gotten the side effects! There must have been a mix-up. She asked the doctor to check the records again. He laughed good-naturedly as he assured her that the bottle she had taken home with her, the bottle that had given Schonfeld her life back, indeed contained nothing but placebo pills.
As she sat there in shock, the doctor insisted that just because she hadn’t been getting any real medication, it didn’t mean that she had been imagining her depression or her improvement; it only meant that whatever had made her feel better wasn’t due to Effexor.
And she wasn’t the only one: The study results would soon show that 38 percent of the placebo group felt better, compared to 52 percent of the group who received Effexor. But when the rest of the data came out, it was the researchers’ turn to be surprised: The patients like Schonfeld, who had improved on the placebos, hadn’t just imagined feeling better; they had actually changed their brain-wave patterns. The EEG recordings taken so faithfully over the course of the study showed a significant increase in activity in the prefrontal cortex, which in depressed patients typically has very low activity.3
Thus the placebo effect was not only altering Schonfeld’s mind, but also bringing about real physical changes in her biology. In other words, it wasn’t just in her mind; it was in her brain. She wasn’t just feeling well—she was well. Schonfeld literally had a different brain by the end of the study, without taking any drug or doing anything differently. It was her mind that had changed her body. More than a dozen years later, Schonfeld still felt much improved.
How is it possible that a sugar pill could not only lift the symptoms of deep-seated depression, but also cause bona fide side effects like nausea? And what does it mean that the same inert substance actually has the power to change how brain waves fire, increasing activity in the very part of the brain most affected by depression? Can the subjective mind really create those kinds of measurable objective physiological changes? What’s going on in the mind and in the body that would allow a placebo to so perfectly mimic a real drug in this way? Could the same phenomenal healing effect occur not only with chronic mental illness, but also with a life-threatening condition such as cancer?
A “Miracle” Cure: Now You See It, Now You Don’t
In 1957, UCLA psychologist Bruno Klopfer published an article in a peer-reviewed journal telling the story of a man he referred to as “Mr. Wright,” who had advanced lymphoma, a cancer of the lymph glands.4 The man had huge tumors, some as big as an orange, in his neck, groin, and armpits, and his cancer was not responding at all to conventional treatments. He lay in his bed for weeks, “febrile, gasping for air, completely bedridden.” His doctor, Philip West, had given up hope—although Wright himself had not. When Wright found out that the hospital where he was being treated (in Long Beach, California) just happened to be one of ten hospitals and research centers in the country that were evaluating an experimental drug extracted from horse blood called Krebiozen, he got very excited. Wright unrelentingly badgered Dr. West for days until the physician agreed to give him some of the new remedy (even though Wright couldn’t officially be part of the trial, which required patients to have at least a three-month life expectancy).
Wright received his injection of Krebiozen on a Friday, and by Monday, he was walking around, laughing, and joking with his nurses, acting pretty much like a new man. Dr. West reported that the tumors “had melted like snowballs on a hot stove.” Within three days, the tumors were half their original size. In ten more days, Wright was sent home—he’d been cured. It seemed like a miracle.
But two months later, the media reported that the ten trials showed that Krebiozen turned out to be a dud. Once Wright read the news, became fully conscious of the results, and embraced the thought that the drug was useless, he relapsed immediately, with his tumors soon returning. Dr. West suspected that Wright’s initial positive response was due to the placebo effect, and knowing that his patient was terminal, he figured he had little to lose—and Wright had everything to gain—by testing out his theory. So the doctor told Wright not to believe the newspaper reports and that he’d suffered a relapse because the Krebiozen they’d given Wright was found to be part of a bad batch. What Dr. West called “a new, super-refined, double-strength” version of the drug was on its way to the hospital, and Wright could have it as soon as it arrived.
In anticipation of being cured, Wright was elated, and a few days later, he received the injection. But this time, the syringe Dr. West used contained no drug, experimental or not. The syringe was filled only with distilled water.
Again, Wright’s tumors magically vanished. He happily returned home and did well for another two months, free of tumors in his body. But then the American Medical Association made the announcement that Krebiozen was indeed worthless. The medical establishment had been duped. The “miracle drug” turned out to be a hoax: nothing more than mineral oil containing a simple amino acid. The manufacturers were eventually indicted. Upon hearing the news, Wright relapsed a final time—no longer believing in the possibility of health. He returned to the hospital hopeless and two days later was dead.
Is it possible that Wright somehow changed his state of being, not once but twice, to that of a man who simply didn’t have cancer—in a matter of days? Did his body then automatically respond to a new mind? And could he have changed his state back to that of a man with cancer once he heard the drug was purported to be worthless, with his body creating exactly the same chemistry and returning to the familiar sickened condition? Is it possible to achieve such a new biochemical state not only when taking a pill or getting a shot, but also when undergoing something as invasive as surgery?
The Knee Surgery That Never Happened
In 1996, orthopedic surgeon Bruce Moseley, then of the Baylor College of Medicine and one of Houston’s leading experts in orthopedic sports medicine, published a trial study based on his experience with ten volunteers—all men who had served in the military and suffered from osteoarthritis of the knee.5 Due to the severity of their conditions, many of these men had a noticeable limp, walked with a cane, or needed some type of assistance to get around.
The study was designed to look at arthroscopic surgery, a popular surgery that involved anesthetizing the patient before making a small incision to insert a fiber-optic instrument called an arthroscope, which the surgeon would use to get a good look at the patient’s joint. In the surgery, the doctor would then scrape and rinse the joint to remove any fragments of degenerated cartilage that were thought to be the cause of the inflammation and pain. At that time, about three-quarters of a million patients received this surgery every year.
In Dr. Moseley’s study, two of the ten men were to be given the standard surgery, called a debridement (where the surgeon scrapes strands of cartilage from the knee joint); three of them were to receive a procedure called a lavage (where high-pressured water is injected through the knee joint, rinsing and flushing out the decayed arthritic material); and five of them would receive sham surgery, in which Dr. Moseley would deftly slice through their skin with a scalpel and then just sew them back up again without performing any medical procedure at all. For those five men, there would be no arthroscope, no scraping of the joint, no removal of bone fragments, and no washing—just an incision and then stitches.
The start of each of the ten procedures was exactly the same: The patient was wheeled into the operating room and given general anesthesia while Dr. Moseley scrubbed up. Once the surgeon entered the operating theater, he would find a sealed envelope waiting for him that would tell him which of the three groups the patient on the table had been randomly assigned to. Dr. Moseley would have no idea what the envelope contained until he actually ripped it open.
After the surgery, all ten of the patients in the study reported greater mobility and less pain. In fact, the men who received “pretend” surgery did just as well as those who’d received debridement or lavage surgery. There was no difference in the results—even six months later. And six years later, when two of the men who’d received the placebo surgery were interviewed, they reported that they were still walking normally, without pain, and had greater range of motion.6 They said that they could now perform all the everyday activities that they hadn’t been able to do before the surgery, six years earlier. The men felt as though they’d regained their lives.
Fascinated by the results, Dr. Moseley published another study in 2002 involving 180 patients who were followed for two years after their surgeries.7 Again, all three groups improved, with patients beginning to walk without pain or limping immediately after the surgery. But again, neither of the two groups who actually had the surgery improved any more than the patients who received the placebo surgery—and this held true even after two years.
Could it be possible that these patients got better simply because they had faith and belief in the healing power of the surgeon, the hospital, and even in the gleaming, modern operating room itself? Did they somehow envision a life with a fully healed knee, simply surrender to that possible outcome, and then literally walk right into it? Was Dr. Moseley, in effect, nothing more than a modern-day witch doctor in a white lab coat? And is it possible to attain the same degree of healing when facing something more threatening, maybe something as serious as heart surgery?
The Heart Surgery That Wasn’t
In the late 1950s, two groups of researchers conducted studies comparing the then-standard surgery for angina to a placebo.8 This was well before the coronary-artery bypass graft, the surgery most often used today. Back then, most heart patients received a procedure known as internal mammary ligation, which involved exposing the damaged arteries and intentionally tying them off. The thinking was that if surgeons blocked the blood flow in this way, it would force the body to sprout new vascular channels, increasing blood flow to the heart. The surgery was extremely successful for the huge majority of patients who had it, although doctors had no solid proof that any new blood vessels were ever actually created—hence the motivation for the two studies.
These groups of researchers, one in Kansas City and one in Seattle, each followed the same procedure, dividing their study subjects into two groups. One received the standard internal mammary ligation, and the other received a sham surgery; the surgeons made the same small incisions into the patients’ chests that they made for the real surgery, exposing the arteries, but then they just sewed the patients back up, doing nothing more.
The results of both studies were strikingly similar: 67 percent of the patients who had received the actual surgery felt less pain and needed less medication, while 83 percent of those who had received the sham surgery enjoyed the same level of improvement. The placebo surgery had actually worked better than the real surgery!
Could it be that somehow the patients who had received the sham surgery so believed that they’d get better that they actually did get better—through nothing more than holding that expectation for the best? And if that is possible, what does that say about the effects our everyday thoughts, whether positive or negative, have on our bodies and our health?
Attitude Is Everything
A wealth of research now exists to show that our attitude does indeed affect our health, including how long we live. For example, the Mayo Clinic published a study in 2002 that followed 447 people for more than 30 years, showing that optimists were healthier physically and mentally.9 Optimist literally means “best,” suggesting that those folks focused their attention on the best future scenario. Specifically, the optimists had fewer problems with daily activities as a result of their physical health or their emotional state; experienced less pain; felt more energetic; had an easier time with social activities; and felt happier, calmer, and more peaceful most of the time. This came right on the heels of another Mayo Clinic study that followed more than 800 people for 30 years, showing that optimists live longer than pessimists.10
Researchers at Yale followed 660 people, aged 50 and older, for up to 23 years, discovering that those with a positive attitude about aging lived more than seven years longer than those who had a more negative outlook about growing older.11 Attitude had more of an influence on longevity than blood pressure, cholesterol levels, smoking, body weight, or level of exercise.
Additional studies have looked more specifically at heart health and attitude. Around the same time, a Duke University study of 866 heart patients reported that those who routinely felt more positive emotions had a 20 percent greater chance of being alive 11 years later than those who habitually experienced more negative emotions.12 Even more striking are the results of a study of 255 medical students at the Medical College of Georgia who were followed for 25 years: Those who were the most hostile had five times greater incidence of coronary heart disease.13 And a Johns Hopkins study presented at the American Heart Association’s 2001 Scientific Sessions even showed that a positive outlook may offer the strongest known protection against heart disease in adults at risk due to family history.14 This study suggests that having the right attitude can work as well as or better than eating the proper diet, getting the right amount of exercise, and maintaining the ideal body weight.
How is it that our everyday mind-set—whether we’re generally more joyful and loving or more hostile and negative—can help determine how long we live? Is it possible for us to change our current mind-set? If so, could having a new mind-set override the way our minds have been conditioned by past experiences? Or could expecting something negative to recur actually help to bring that about?
Nauseated Before the Needle
According to the National Cancer Institute, a condition called anticipatory nausea occurs in about 29 percent of patients receiving chemotherapy when they are exposed to the smells and sights that remind them of their chemo treatments.15 About 11 percent feel so sick before their treatments that they actually vomit. Some cancer patients start feeling nauseated in the car on the way to get chemo, before they even set foot inside the hospital, while others throw up while still in the waiting room.
A 2001 study from the University of Rochester Cancer Center published in the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management concluded that expecting nausea was the strongest predictor that patients would actually experience it.16 The researchers’ data reported that 40 percent of chemo patients who thought they would get sick—because their doctors told them that they probably would be sick after the treatment—went on to develop nausea before the treatment was even administered. An additional 13 percent who said they were unsure of what to expect also got sick. Yet none of the patients who didn’t expect to get nauseated got sick.
How can it be that some people become so convinced that they will get sick from chemotherapy drugs that they get ill before any of the drugs are even administered? Is it possible that the power of their thoughts could be what’s making them sick? And if that’s true of 40 percent of chemo patients, could it also be true that 40 percent of folks could just as easily get well by simply changing their thoughts about what to expect about their health or from their day? Could a single thought that a person accepts also make that person better?
Digestive Difficulties Disappear
Not long ago, as I was about to get off an airplane in Austin, I met a woman who was reading a book that caught my eye. We were standing and waiting to deplane, and I saw the book sticking out of her bag; the title mentioned the word belief. We smiled at each other, and I asked her what the book was about.
“Christianity and faith,” she answered. “Why do you ask?” I told her that I was writing a new book on the placebo effect and that my book was all about belief.
“I want to tell you this story,” she said. She went on to tell me that years ago, she had been diagnosed with gluten intolerance, celiac disease, colitis, and a host of other ills, and experienced chronic pain. She’d read up on the diseases and gone to see several different health professionals for advice. They had advised her to avoid certain foods and to take certain prescription drugs, which she had done, but she’d still felt pain throughout her entire body. She also hadn’t been able to sleep, had skin rashes and severe digestive disturbances, and suffered from a whole list of other unpleasant symptoms. Then, years later, the woman went to see a new doctor, who decided to do some blood tests. When the blood tests came back, all of the results were negative.
“The day I found out I was really normal and there was nothing wrong with me, I thought, I’m fine, and all my symptoms went away. I immediately felt great and could eat whatever I wanted,” she told me with a flourish. Smiling, she added, “What do you believe about that?”
If it’s true that learning new information that leads to a 180-degree turnaround in what we believe about ourselves can actually make our symptoms disappear, what’s going on in our bodies that’s supporting that and making it happen? What’s the exact relationship between the mind and the body? Could it be possible that those new beliefs could actually change our brains and body chemistries, physically rewire our neurological circuitry of who we think we are, and alter our genetic expression? Could we in fact become different people?
Parkinson’s vs. the Placebo
Parkinson’s disease is a neurological disorder marked by the gradual degeneration of nerve cells in the portion of the midbrain called the basal ganglia, which controls body movements. The brains of those who have this heartbreaking disease don’t produce enough of the neurotransmitter dopamine, which the basal ganglia needs for proper functioning. Early symptoms of Parkinson’s, which is currently considered incurable, include motor issues such as muscle rigidity, tremors, and changes in gait and speech patterns that override voluntary control.
In one study, a group of researchers at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver informed a group of Parkinson’s patients that they were going to receive a drug that would significantly improve their symptoms.17 In reality, the patients received a placebo—nothing more than a saline injection. Even so, half of them who had no drug intervention, in fact, had much better motor control after receiving the injection.
The researchers then scanned the patients’ brains to get a better idea of what had happened and found that the people who responded positively to the placebo were actually manufacturing dopamine in their brains—as much as 200 percent more than before. To get an equivalent effect with a drug, you’d have to administer roughly a full dose of amphetamine—a mood-elevating drug that also increases dopamine.
It seemed that merely expecting to get better unleashed some previously untapped power within the Parkinson’s patients that triggered the production of the dopamine—exactly what their bodies needed to get better. And if this is true, then what is the process by which thought alone can manufacture dopamine in the brain? Might such a new internal state, brought on by the combination of clear intention and heightened emotional state, actually make us invincible in certain situations, by activating our own inner storehouse of pharmaceuticals and overriding the genetic circumstances of disease that we once considered outside our conscious control?
Of Deadly Snakes and Strychnine
In parts of Appalachia exist pockets of a 100-year-old religious ritual known as snake handling, or “taking up serpents.”18 While West Virginia is the only state where it’s still legal, that doesn’t stop the faithful, and local police in other states are known to turn a blind eye to the practice. In these small and modest churches, as congregations gather for the worship service, the preacher enters carrying one or more briefcase-shaped locked wooden boxes with hinged, clear-plastic doors perforated with air holes, and places the boxes carefully on the platform at the front of the sanctuary or meeting room, near the pulpit. Before long, the music starts, a high-energy blend of country-and-western and bluegrass melodies with deeply religious lyrics about salvation and the love of Jesus. Live musicians wail away on keyboards, electric guitars, and even drum sets that any teenage band would envy, while the parishioners shake tambourines as the spirit moves them. As the energy builds, the preacher might light a flame in a container on top of the pulpit and hold his hand in the fire, allowing the flames to lick his outstretched palm before he picks up the container to sweep the fire slowly over his bare forearms. He’s just getting “warmed up.”
The congregants soon begin swaying and laying hands on one another, speaking in tongues and jumping up and down, dancing to the music in praise of their savior. They are overcome with the spirit, what they call “being anointed.” Then it’s time for the preacher to flip open one of the locked boxes, reach a hand in, and pull out a deadly snake—usually a rattlesnake, cottonmouth, or copperhead. He, too, is dancing and working up quite a sweat as he holds the live serpent around its middle so that the snake’s head is frighteningly close to the preacher’s own head and throat.
He might hold the snake high in the air before bringing it back down closer to his body, dancing all the while, as the snake winds its lower half around his arm and gyrates its upper half in the air in whatever manner it pleases. The preacher might then get a second or even a third snake from additional wooden cases, and the congregants, men and women alike, might join him in handling the serpents as they feel the anointing coming over them. In some services, the preacher might even ingest a poison, like strychnine, from a simple drinking glass, without suffering any ill effects.
Although the snake handlers do sometimes get bitten, considering the thousands of services where feverish believers have reached into those hinged wooden boxes without a trace of doubt or fear, it doesn’t happen often. And even when it does, they don’t always die—even though they don’t rush to the hospital, preferring instead to have the congregation gather around them in prayer. Why are these people not bitten more often? And why aren’t there more deaths when they do get bitten? How can they get into a state of mind where they are not afraid of such venomous creatures, whose bite is known to be deadly, and how can that state of mind protect them?
Then there are the displays of extreme strength in emergency situations, known as “hysterical strength.” In April 2013, for example, 16-year-old Hannah Smith and her 14-year-old sister, Haylee, of Lebanon, Oregon, lifted a 3,000-pound tractor to free their father, Jeff Smith, who was trapped underneath.19 And what about firewalkers—indigenous tribes practicing sacred rituals, and Westerners taking workshops—who stroll across burning coals? Or even the carnival showmen or Javanese trance dancers who feel compelled to chew and swallow glass (a disorder known as hyalophagia)?
How are such seemingly superhuman feats possible, and do they have something vital in common? Could it be that at the height of their uncompromising belief, these people are somehow changing their bodies such that they become immune to their environments? And can the same rock-solid belief that empowers snake handlers and firewalkers also go the other way, causing us to harm ourselves—and even die—without our having any awareness of what we’re doing?
Victory Over Voodoo
In 1938, a 60-year-old man in rural Tennessee spent four months getting sicker and sicker, before his wife brought him to a 15-bed hospital at the edge of town.20 By this time, Vance Vanders (not his real name) had lost more than 50 pounds and appeared to be near death. The doctor, Drayton Doherty, suspected that Vanders was suffering from tuberculosis or possibly cancer, but repeated tests and x-rays came up negative. Dr. Doherty’s physical examination showed nothing that could be causing Vanders’s distress. Vanders refused to eat, so he was given a feeding tube, but he stubbornly vomited whatever was put down the tube. He continued to get worse, repeating the conviction that he was going to die, and eventually he was barely able to talk. The end seemed near, although Dr. Doherty still had no idea what the man’s affliction was.
Vanders’s distraught wife asked to speak to Dr. Doherty privately and, swearing him to secrecy, told him that her husband’s problem was that he’d been “voodoo’d.” It seems that Vanders, who lived in a community where voodoo was a common practice, had had an argument with a local voodoo priest. The priest had summoned Vanders to the cemetery late one night, where he put a hex on the man by waving a bottle of malodorous liquid in front of Vanders’s face. The priest told Vanders that he would soon die and that no one could save him. That was it. Vanders was convinced that his days were numbered and thus believed in a new, dismal future reality. The defeated man returned home and refused to eat. Eventually, his wife brought him to the hospital.
After Dr. Doherty had heard the whole story, he came up with a rather unorthodox plan for treating his patient. In the morning, he summoned Vanders’s family to his bedside and told them that he was now certain that he knew how to cure the sick man. The family listened intently as Dr. Doherty spun the following fabricated tale. He said that on the previous night, he had gone to the cemetery, where he’d tricked the voodoo priest into meeting with him and divulging how he had voodoo’d Vanders. It hadn’t been easy, Dr. Doherty said. The priest had understandably not wanted to cooperate, although he finally relented once Dr. Doherty had pinned him against a tree and choked him.
Dr. Doherty said that the priest had told him that he’d rubbed some lizard eggs onto Vanders’s skin and that the eggs had found their way to Vanders’s stomach, where they’d hatched. Most of the lizards had died, but a large one had survived and was now eating Vanders’s body from the inside out. The doctor announced that all he had to do was remove the lizard from Vanders’s body and the man would be cured.
He then called for the nurse, who dutifully brought a large syringe filled with what Dr. Doherty claimed was a powerful medicine. In truth, the syringe was filled with a drug that induced vomiting. Dr. Doherty carefully inspected the syringe to make sure it was working right and then ceremoniously injected his frightened patient with the fluid. In a grand gesture, he left the room, not saying another word to the stunned family.
It wasn’t long before the patient began to vomit. The nurse provided a basin and Vanders heaved, wailed, and retched for a time. At a point that Dr. Doherty judged to be near the end of the vomiting, he confidently strode back into the room. Nearing the bedside, he reached into his black doctor’s bag and scooped up a green lizard, hiding it in his palm beyond anyone’s notice. Then just as Vanders vomited again, Dr. Doherty slipped the reptile into the basin.
“Look, Vance!” he immediately cried out with all the drama he could muster. “Look what has come out of you. You are now cured. The voodoo curse is lifted!”
The room was buzzing. Some family members fell to the floor, moaning. Vanders himself jumped back away from the basin, in a wide-eyed daze. Within a few minutes, he’d fallen into a deep sleep that lasted more than 12 hours.
When Vanders finally awoke, he was very hungry and eagerly consumed so much food that the doctor feared his stomach would burst. Within a week, the patient had regained all his weight and strength. He left the hospital a well man and lived at least another ten years.
Is it possible that a man could just curl up and die simply because he thought he’d been hexed? Does the contemporary witch doctor, adorned with a stethoscope and holding a prescription pad, speak with the same conviction for us as the voodoo priest did for Vanders—and is our belief the same? And if it’s indeed true that a person could, on one level, just decide to die, then could it also be true that a person with a terminal disease could make the decision to live? Can someone permanently change his or her internal state—dropping his or her identity as a cancer or arthritis victim or a heart patient or a person with Parkinson’s—and simply walk into a healthy body just as easily as shedding one set of clothes and donning another? In the upcoming chapters, we’ll explore what’s really possible and how that applies to you.