After one hundred years, there appears to be a very evident change in the thinking of those chiropractors who might be described as the traditional ones, the one-cause, one-cure chiropractors. There is a not-so-subtle change, if not in the rank and file, at least among the leadership in how they are describing chiropractic. It seems to me that the members of their organizations, the students at their colleges and the readers of their publications may want to consider whether they truly represent traditional chiropractic any longer or whether the chiropractic that they are now presenting would even be acceptable to D.D. and B.J.
Many of these leaders have finally come to the realization that chiropractic is not the answer to the cause of all disease. They realize that we live in a society that is becoming more and more demanding of proof and that we cannot just make claims about what chiropractic can do. We simply have no acceptable proof of an empirical nature to claim that chiropractic cures all or even any medical conditions, with the exception of a few minor musculoskeletal ailments. Not only have these traditional chiropractic leaders realized that chiropractic can no longer lay claim to the one-cause, one-cure theory, but they also have come to the realization that chiropractic is never going to replace medicine as the number one healing art. The reasons are numerous. Most people are relief-oriented and medicine is becoming more effective in that area. Chiropractic cannot compete with them. Most people generally are not concerned about health, especially when offered all the quick fixes and miracle cures that abound.
The chiropractor who has always thought chiropractic to be a subset of medicine, for the treatment of back aches and stiff necks, is not affected. But the chiropractor who expected to cure everything and to replace medicine with his subluxation correction for the cause of all disease is in a professional “no-man’s land.” As a result, some of them are advocating things that were once heretical procedures for a chiropractor to do. They were mixing. You see, B.J. considered mixing to be combining medical procedures with chiropractic ones. Various therapies were medical, adjusting subluxation was chiropractic. Analyzing the spine for subluxation was chiropractic. Doing medical tests for medical conditions was medicine. But now, chiropractors who once considered themselves practicing in the model of B.J. are somehow trying to justify doing medical procedures under the pretense of being a primary health care provider or, and here is the ironic part, replacing the medical doctor as the family doctor.
I cannot be sure, after all I never spoke to B.J. and he doesn’t speak to me today, but I do not believe that he ever envisioned us replacing medicine by assuming their role, doing their procedures or doing their tests to ascertain their conditions and then trying to treat those medical conditions or their cause with our adjustment. That was never his idea of chiropractic. If that is the objective of the traditional chiropractor who wants to look into all bodily orifices under the guise of being the “doctor, doctor,” well that is fine and good. But don’t pass it off as straight chiropractic and don’t tell us that is what B.J. would condone or would be doing today if he were alive.
The fact is, there is another approach to chiropractic, one that in no way infringes upon or tries to supplant medicine, we call it objective straight chiropractic. It is one which constantly looks less and less like medicine and more and more like what B.J. envisioned chiropractic to be separate, distinct and pure. If you are part of an organization, school or group that appears to be changing its approach, it is time for a reality check. Is that approach moving closer to medicine or further from medicine? If they are moving closer, you may want to reevaluate your involvement. v14n2