Dumke seeks in this study to penetrate beyond the phenomenon of AIDS in order to gain a clear understanding of its esoteric background. Working out of a firm conviction that the systematic study of the human being contained in Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy has a decisive and clarifying contribution to make toward an understanding of AIDS as an illness, Dumke examines the methodology of modern microbiological and medical research and demonstrates how a "complementary knowledge" based on the development of human thinking needs to be fostered in an endeavor to grasp the totality of the human being.