[Placebo and placebo effect].

The word placebo appeared for the first time in an English medical dictionary in 1785. In French, it appeared much latter in 1958. This word defines an experimental tool used for rigourous evaluation of a specific effect of pharmacological treatment and the non specific effect of any therapy.

[Efficacy of a non blind placebo prescription].

The aim of our open clinical trial was to determine the efficacy and the tolerance of a blue coloured placebo in moderated anxious patients (Hamilton score below 15) and a red one for tired patients without DSM IV criteria of major depressive disorder. All the patients knew that treatment was a placebo and so, had no pharmacological effect. The trial run over seven days.

[Madness in the German cinema (1913-1933].

During these twenty years, from 1913 to 1933, of the history of the German cinema, the cinematographic representation of madness varies according to the fluctuations of the social and economical background. The political and ideological chaos of the immediate post-war years was symbolized in the allegorical imagery of unreason in the expressionist cinema. The same equivalence, the same symbolization can be found in the cinema of the thirties when the crash of Wall-Street foretells a crisis like the former.