Social Contagion Chris Waldburger Last year, I discussed how the naming of diseases and disorders helps to entrench and spread those diseases and disorders. Oliver Sacks, in his classic work, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat , points out that Tourette’s Syndrome and muscular dystrophy exploded in cases after a name was invented for them. After he made his first diagnosis for Tourette’s he recalls seeing three other cases the very next day. Shakespeare’s Hamlet famously said, to those who disbelieved the reality of his father’s ghost, ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’ The same is true of our modern, materialist philosophy. In my piece, I discussed two possible causes for this phenomenon: The nocebo effect. Just as placebos can cure people, because patients believe they can, so too can patients who dread disease and despair of treatment, help bring about negative outcomes. Quantum entanglement. This was adm...