24
The Modern Medical Shaman
How silly these backward Kota villagers were, you may very
well say. What strange nonsense prayed on their primitive minds.
How fortunate we are that in our modern age, few of us are this
gullible. But we are.
Like the Kurumba sorcerers, modern doctors sell the illusion of
control. Often when you describe your symptoms to your M.D., he
gives you an indifferent look, as if no such problem exists. You are not
the only one your doctor treats this way.
Norman Cousins, in Human Options, described a case which he
considered all too typical, one "in which the hospital staff was
contented with a half truth. The investigation of the patient was
decidedly unscientific in that it stopped short of even an attempt to
determine the real cause of the symptoms. As soon as organic disease
could be excluded, the whole problem was given up. But the
symptoms persisted. The case was a medical failure in note of the fact
that the patient went home with the assurance that there was nothing
the matter with her."36
According to the National Center for Health Statistics, Americans
make six hundred million office visits per year. Doctors conclude that
the patients in over half these cases have no real problem.37
Why would a man selling his ability to deal with disease pretend
that your affliction is some contemptible whim? After all, the
symptoms one generation swears are "in your head" are often shown
by research to be real a few decades later. But a doctor does not
generally confess ignorance. He is selling the illusion of omnipotence,
the illusion that through consulting him you gain control over your
body, the same illusion sold by the sorcerers of India.
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