    24

    Poetry and the Lust for Power

    The hunger of subcultural superorganisms disguises itself in

    strange and mysterious ways.  Let's return for an example to modern

    medicine, which we normally think of as an objective science, above

    the mere vagaries of political lust.  Like any picture of the invisible

    world, medicine wears the austere mantle of objective truth.  But in

    reality, today's medical beliefs were once an ideology one group used

    to seize power from another.

    Homeopathy was developed by a German physician named

    Samuel Hahnemann in the early 18OO's.43   Hahnemann--who had

    studied traditional medicine at Leipzig, Vienna and Erlangen--believed

    in giving patients highly diluted dosages of what he called

    "remedies."44  These were a vast array of substances that actually

    produced low levels of the symptoms they were designed to cure.

    Hahnemann was using a principle similar to the one employed today

    by "clinical ecologists," medical specialists who treat allergies to food,

    pesticides, plastics, and other substances by giving minuscule

    quantities of the substance to which the patient is allergic.  These

    microdoses seem to help the body fight off the allergen's negative

    effects.  Treatments of this nature have been demonstrated in recent

    years to reduce symptoms ranging from depression and uncontrollable

    rages to backache and skin irritation.45

    It is not surprising, then, that Hahnemann claimed to be able to

    treat a tremendous variety of human diseases.  His form of medicine

    was so successful that by 19OO there were homeopathic medical

    schools and hospitals all across America.46  What's more, homeopathy

    seemed to work.  In the Yellow Fever epidemic of 1878, the mortality

    rate of patients treated by traditional methods was 16%.  The rate of

    death for the patients who had been fortunate enough to find a

    homeopathic doctor, on the other hand, was less than half that.47

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