Surgical Placebo in Jewish Law

Background Placebos have been used in one form or another for at least two centuries.1 Researchers in the late eighteenth century, in an attempt to establish science as a sound discipline separate from unorthodox and unconventional fi elds of treatment and therapy, recognized the idea of confounding environmental and psychological factors and attempted to mitigate them as best possible. For most of its history, however, placebo use was limited to medical treatments, and not initially applied to surgical procedures. In 1959, a landmark trial of internal mammary artery ligation was conducted, introducing the concept of surgical placebo and exposing the practice to ethical scrutiny.2 It was thought that the chest pain associated with heart attacks and angina was caused by decreased blood fl ow to the chest wall. By ligating the blood supply to the chest wall, the pain would be preemptively mitigated. Patients enrolled in the control arm