A sugar pill can measurably dull pain if you believe it's medicine

Placebos contain no active ingredient, yet across countless trials patients given them report real reductions in pain, nausea and other subjective symptoms — driven by expectation, attention from a caregiver, and conditioning, not the pill itself. It's why modern drug trials compare treatments against a placebo group rather than no treatment at all.

— Henry K. Beecher, The Powerful Placebo — Journal of the American Medical Association, 1955