Recently Bill Gates has come under fire in the form of an antitrust suite regarding his Microsoft web browser. The Government is quick to jump on this, and perhaps rightly so, but slow to examine a system that has had a monopoly in the market place for many decades. That system is Western biomedicine. In the following months I will explore this question from several perspectives. To begin, however, I will concentrate on mythology and the politics of health.
Myths speak to ultimate concerns, that is, the mystery of our existence.
They also speak to the problem of life and death, the origins of disease, war, and ill fortune, and they prepare us for our physical death and perhaps resurrection. Finally, myths entertain and reassure. Contact between the European and indigenous system encouraged the development of different medical schools or philosophies in the New World. For example, there was Physiomedicalism, founded by Samuel Thompson during the late 18th century and early 19th century, Eclecticism, founded by Wooster Beech in the 1830's, Homeopathy which had its origins in Germany approximately 180 years ago, but found its way to North American, Naturopathic Medicine developing during the late 19th century and which combined a number of healing traditions from around the world. Thus, at the turn of the century in the United States, there were a number of healing traditions in competition for the health market, but this was soon to change.