The Logical Approach
One of the most outstanding characteristics of chiropractic in general, and straight chiropractic in particular, is the logic it is based upon. Perhaps it is not so much the logic of straight chiropractic that is striking but the illogic of everything other approach in comparison.
There are basically three approaches to the practice of chiropractic. The first is practicing chiropractic as a drugless treatment of disease. In order to practice in this manner, you must know how to properly treat diseases. You must know what is the most effective treatment for that disease, providing you want to best serve the patient. Using the one you like best, the one you are most comfortable with, or the one the state allows you to use is not in the patient’s best interest. To determine what is the best treatment, you must know all the alternatives and how they help. This of course necessitates a knowledge of, and an ability to, practice medicine. Why? Because for most diseases, (excluding musculoskeletal) medicine and/or surgery either by itself or in combination with a drugless approach constitutes the best treatment. At this point, the chiropractor cannot use medicine or surgery, therefore he is faced with a number of alternatives. Unless he wants to be strictly a referral service he must by some manner become part of the “medical team.” Much of our legal effort against medicine is not so much to chastise them for past vituperations, but to force them to like us and allow us to work with them. The problem with this tack is that you cannot force people to like you. At best we will just encourage them to learn to do what we are doing. But they are already doing it, and learning to adjust spines is really not that difficult. After all, most chiropractic colleges relegate it to a few semesters in the curriculum. When the medics learn adjusting, they will not have to accept us into the country club and may even be able to hurt us economically. Clearly getting them to work with us is not logical. The only other approach the disease-treating chiropractor can take is to confine the diseases he treats to an area where the “drugless non-invasive” approach he utilizes almost always seems to be superior to the drug/surgery approach. This is why most disease-treating chiropractors confine their efforts to musculoskeletal conditions. This approach will probably meet with the same results as the first: the M.D.’s will eventually be doing it. Worse yet, it denies people the true benefits of chiropractic care. Clearly there is no logic to using chiropractic as a drugless treatment of disease.
The second approach is from another part of our profession that claims to hold to the philosophy of chiropractic. However, the chiropractic philosophy follows a line of logic called deduction. We begin with a Major Premise, the existence of a universal intelligence. From that we draw out conclusions which themselves form principles. The point is that the deductive process draws us to the logical conclusion that the chiropractic objective is a unique one which necessitates unique procedures. Utilizing medical, therapeutic procedures to try to achieve the chiropractic objective of correcting vertebral subluxation is illogical. Similarly, following medical diagnostic procedures to achieve the chiropractic objective of locating vertebral subluxation is equally illogical. This is where the “straights who diagnose” represented by the largest chiropractic colleges, fail to follow a line of reason.
The third approach, straight chiropractic, acknowledges that there are many effective ways to treat disease, including drugs, surgery and drugless methods. To determine which is/are the most effective in any given situation necessitates expertise in all of them, something no intelligent, sane chiropractor would claim to have. It also recognizes that to utilize medical procedures to achieve a unique non-medical objective is irrational. If you choose to be a chiropractor, then straight chiropractic is the only approach that makes the slightest bit of sense. v7n3