This is where I tend to lose the /r/skeptic crowd - "Placebo effect" includes the word "effect." Ariely spends a good chapter on it. Take two placebos and tell your subject that one of them costs 10 cents per pill. Now tell him that the other placebo costs 10 dollars per pill. Both of them are placebo. The more "expensive" one is a better placebo. Different cultures respond better to different procedures: Germans love shots, for some reason. Americans like pills. It's a real, measurable, quantifiable effect. Your uncle didn't cast a demon out of your cousin. And yeah - the fever probably broke. but if your cousin truly believed your uncle, your uncle's mumbo-jumbo may damn well have helped the fever break. There's a reason every culture humanity has ever fostered has witch doctors and shamen. They work. Not as well as legit medicine generally, but better than nothing. And in this country, we dismissively tuck that into "bedside manner."