Scientific American Frontiers: The Wonder Pill

Doctors once knowingly prescribed placebo pills to their patients before modern pharmaceuticals existed to help them. At the Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, MA, Scientific American Frontiers host Alan Alda stands among hundreds of graves. Many of them belong to children and adults in their 30s and 40s who died before medical doctors had useful tools against common bacterial diseases like cholera and tuberculosis. But that didn't stop doctors from ministering to their patients. Alda asks Charles Rosenberg and Anne Harrington -both medical historians from Harvard University - what kept doctors in business. Rosenberg shows Alda a medical manual, The English Physician Enlarged, published in 1656. The book lists some 369 herbal remedies for a wide range of ailments. Perhaps the most impressive herb was one known as "Hercules Allheal," which could -according to the manual - heal everything from gout to toothaches. Did it really work? Scientific American Frontiers examines all this and more in The Wonder Pill.

Airs Wednesday, August 27 at 8 pm.