By the power of placebo!

[Jormengand]

How is that possible? A placebo is just a pill without any active ingredients; we've had the technology to make that for more than fifty years and I don't think there has been any great advances. Like the rifle, placebos are mature technology; I don't see how you could make a sugar pill better.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

On the other hand, as medicine gets better, the placebo gets better automatically because we understand that medicine is becoming more effective and therefore we assume we'll get a stronger effect when we take a placebo without knowing it's a placebo. Presumably, even though placebos are effective when we know they're placebos, they wouldn't get stronger as medicine improved if we knew they were placebos.

(Disclaimer: the entire paragraph above is speculation by a specialist in an unrelated field about an effect we don't really understand; handle with care.)