Those signing the Declaration of Independence as well as those framing the Constitution apparently did not want to enumerate every right that we had so they lumped the right to property under the heading “the pursuit of happiness”. Everyone’s concept of happiness differed and everyone had a different idea of what property was, land, a home, a fishing boat, a horse and wagon, a farm and is products, a store, everything that people could possibly own. This was occurring in light of the fact that England (the government) was taking away their property, the product of their labors (in the form of taxes)to help pay for costs back in England. It was theirs, the colonies maintained, to dump in the Boston Harbor if they wanted to and they did. The colonies knew that they had no right of representation in Parliament, just the right to give their property(in the form of a tax) to the Crown and get nothing in return. “Taxation without representation”. Even the protection of the Crown in what was called the French and Indian War was only to protect what England viewed as their property (the colonies) and even then, the Colonists had to “do their part” in the war. In reality they thought there was no advantage to being subjects of the Crown, no rights and many disadvantages. So many that being a free and independent nation was a more desirable option for many. England opposed that independence and the first War for Independence was fought (clearly different than a revolutio n. For every individual the right to own property, the amount of property and the type of property was different. In addition for some people, property” meant owning other human beings, slaves and/or indentured servants. Unfortunately if that property involved “the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness” for another, it created a problem. To solve that problem which followed even into next century, a war was fought. Even if you had no property, no slaves, there was still a way you wanted to pursue happiness and that was a God-given right. Those speaking on behalf of the Judeo-Christian beliefs acknowledged that the concept of individual nations was as old as the Tower of Babel and the reason for whatever stability existed in the world.
With regard to professional sovereignty, freedom and independence is also the key to the survival of a society, a company, a country or a profession. Whether in Washington D.C., London England, by a government or a backroom cartel, when someone intrudes upon that freedom, the right of an individual, a company or a profession to exercise their “pursuit of happiness”, steps must be taken to preserve those rights. In business that preservation is called copyright. With regard to individuals it is the Constitution that protects those rights. When there is an issue over those rights, courts of law are created to decide those issues.
The Conflict
Between the professions of medicine and chiropractic there arose a conflict over the right to “get sick people well”. Medicine maintained that they had first/prior rights. Chiropractic countered that the body gets itself well and no profession had a claim on that right. They maintained it was a universal/natural law, had been around since man began to walk the earth. It was like air travel based upon universal/natural laws (gravity and aerodynamics) and no one had the exclusive right to air travel ever since birds were created. The only thing that could not be copied was the design of the mechanism. The Wright brothers could patent their flying machine. Others could build flying machines as long as it was different than Wilbur and Orville’s. In the case of medicine, no one had the right to the use of drugs to get sick people well. That was why the charge of “practicing medicine without a license” was dropped in the Morikubo Case (he had never prescribed a drug) and the charge of “practicing osteopathy without a license” remained. Apparently many chiropractic procedures resembled the manipulations of osteopathy in 1906, at least to the untrained eye of a jury. The difference as BJ and Morris explained it had to be the concept of vertebral subluxation, the body healing itself, and the idea that chiropractic related to the spinal column as opposed to all the joints and their relationship to blood and nerves, the osteopathic premise that was a/the cause of disease. Whatever it was, it was sufficient to convince the jury that chiropractic was not osteopathy. If it involved the spine and the nerve system, it was logical that the relationship of the two and the innate intelligence of the body was the issue. Getting sick people well was something that chiropractors, all healers and m.ds. had in common. That common objective ended with the presentation of the 33 principles, 20 years later. It is my contention that during those 20 years, BJ and Morris refined and ended the argument that chiropractic did not address disease but the cause of DIS-EASE culminating in the 33 principles publication which did not address disease in any way.
