@James, You don't seem to understand placebo. There is nothing 'mystical' about it. You can reduce it down to a simple observation that peoples expectations of a particular medicine or treatment can have an effect on how they feel and even produce measurable physiological changes. This effect has nothing to do with any specific properties of the medicine, or treatment itself. Your homeopathic pills may well help, but no more so than non-homeopathic sugar pills, or water. If you feel like accepting that the effects of high potency homeopathic medicine is the same regardless of which homeopathic medicine you take and whether you go through the proper potentizing ritual then fine. All you've got then is pretend medicine and an interesting back story. If you are claiming that which homeopathic you take, and whether you shake it properly is important then you aren't talking about placebo. You also seem to neglect regression to the mean as an explanation for much of homeopathys claimed 'success'.
@Sceptic See "The Growth of a Lie and the End of Coventional Medicine" by Mastrangelo D, Loré C. Department of Ophthalmology, University of Siena, Italy www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/.../entrez