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/possessions 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 its 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, to help pay for costs back in England. The colonists thought that it (the product) was theirs, even 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 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 they, England, viewed as their property (the colonies) and even then, the Colonists had to “pay their share”, fighting in that war. In reality 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. 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 indentured servants. Unfortunately if that property involved the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of another, it created a problem. To solve that problem which extended into the 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. Even those speaking on behalf of the Judaeo-Christian beliefs acknowledged that the concept of individual nations was as old as the Tower of Babel and the reason for whatever stability exists in he 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, the Mafia or a backroom “cartel” (CCE), 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”or “patent”. 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 rights. It was their property. Chiropractic countered that the body gets itself well and no profession had a claim on that right. It was a universal law, that had been around since man began, even before medicine and chiropractic. It was like air travel, based upon universal 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 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 other words no one had the right to copy the use of drugs to get sick people well. That was why the charge of “practicing medicine without a license” was dropped and the charge of “practicing osteopathy without a license” remained in the Morikubo case. Apparently the practice of chiropractic resembled osteopathy enough at that time. It seems that the difference between the procedures of a chiropractic adjustment in 1906 and the manipulation of an osteopath was, at least not to the eye of a prospective jury of lay people that the medics thought it could not be distinguished. 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 was involved with the spinal column and the nerve system as opposed to all the joints and their relationship to blood and nerves, the osteopathic premise of getting sick people well.
