When I first started pharmacy there would be the little old lady who would come in for that special pick-me-up we made specially which would be perhaps an aspirin crushed up in some wonderful pharmaceutical liquid preparation we had made up.
And the occasional script would come through written in Latin abbreviations that only we and the doctor knew asking for a placebo liquid preparation to be made up.
And they worked. These patients left feeling better, a placebo curing whatever it was that ailed them that day.
This video explores the evidence behind the placebo effect.