    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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