Besides the price, there are other factors that can increase the efficiency of treatment, whether real or false. Studies in Europe and the United States have revealed that two inactive pills have a stronger effect than one and that nicely coloured beautifully sized medicines seem to improve people’s health, comparatively with small, banal-looking ones. Also, complex treatments, such as those injectable or multi-step, give superior results to simple medications.

Surprisingly or not, and in surgery, the placebo effect has a hard word to say. The team of psychologist Cynthia McRae, of the University of Denver, USA, has shown that just thinking that they have been operated can help Parkinson’s patients, whose brains produce dopamine insufficiency, to improve their health. The researchers divided the patients into two groups. Half were, indeed, operated, and brain-doped neurons were implanted in the brain. The rest, however, were cut and sewn back. For a year, specialists closely monitored all patients, and when comparing the results of the two groups they were really shocked: they were almost identical.