Sloppy by modern standards — and maybe even those back then — a 1955 article on the placebo effect by Harvard anesthesiologist Henry K. Beecher was nonetheless remarkable and influential. It paved the way for sounder drug trials and pushed scientists to better understand how we process pain. To explore its significance, Host Charlotte Stoddart enlisted the help of Ted Kaptchuk, director of the Program in Placebo Studies at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, who knows the paper well.