Although he is not against using this approach in the short-term to manage very severe conditions, it poses two major problems. Firstly such treatments are toxic and expose the patient to risk. They increase activity and efficiency of cells of the immune system, helping patients resist all kinds of infections, not just those caused by bacteria. Weil discusses the medical profession's discomfort with the placebo effect, whereas he sees the placebo effect as all to the good in that it is a promotion of natural healing. Doctors tend to be wary of drugs with a more general scope of action, feeling that lack of specificity means lack of an underlying mechanism.
Conventional medicine pays little attention to natural healing in theory, and even less in practice.
Instead, an assumption is made that the materialistic, invasive attitude of the conventional model is the only valid approach. Along with this, and probably as a defence against the failures of their treatments, doctors develop a pessimistic outlook which is imparted to their patients. Weil believes that this is a serious problem. It is a form of medical hexing which can compromise the healing outcome. Weil is not against allopathic medicine in all situations.