Placebos have been shown to have a huge effect on people's symptoms in a vast range of illnesses and even change the body's physiology. And their use is widespread. In recent surveys of German and American doctors half said they at some point, prescribed their patients placebos - pills with no active ingredient.
But any doctor who wants to exploit their power has to take the ethically dubious step of deceiving their patients - to lie to make them think they're getting a real drug. And undermining the relationship of trust, key to success of healing and medicine. Or do they?
In this week's All in the Mind Claudia Hammond talks to Ted Kaptchuk, Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard University, who in the first experiment of its kind, has shown that even in sceptical patients who know they are getting a sugar pill, the effect of the tablets on their IBS symptoms was huge. Twice as much as those who'd had no treatment at all.
How does it work and why? Is it that the medical ritual of pill taking, even in the face of accurate information about the lack of any active drug has a powerful therapeutic effect all on its own?
Ted Kaptchuk suggests this effect isn't that patients are thinking themselves better but the ritual of taking pills twice a day somehow encapsulates and unleashes the power of their initial consultation with a compassionate physician. As he says "under the white coat and despite all the hi-tech tools at modern medicines disposal, we doctors still have the feathers of the shaman".
While he says this is just proof of principle, in theory it could pave the way for drugs with powerful effects on symptoms but with no side effects.
Hear the show here: www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0112g4r/All_in_the_Mind_17_05_2011/
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