Thought is a powerful thing, powerful enough to have dramatic effects on our bodies and health. while it’s become commonplace to compare medicines to placebos, there are other medical treatments that usually go forward without this placebo testing. One field that rarely involves placebo testing is surgery. The idea of testing placebo surgeries may seem absurd, but given the risky nature of surgery, it is vitally important to make certain that surgical interventions do what they’re supposed to.

No one’s imagination operates in quite the same way. Some people can imagine a beach in vivid color and detail, while others envision something like a rough sketch of a beach instead. It’s deceptively easy to assume that our ability to visualize and imagine is the same as everyone else’s, and as it turns out, there can indeed be massive differences.

In the year 1660, Prince Rupert gave a very interesting gift to King Charles II: Five glass crystals, each with a bulbous head and a long tapering tail. Though they looked like unremarkable glass baubles and were made of no special material, it soon became obvious that their qualities were far from ordinary. Though the head of the drops were incredibly strong, the entire drop would explosively shatter after just one flick of the tail. For 400 years, Prince Rupert's drops were a mystery to scientists. Now, we finally understand the reason for their immense strength and fragility.