When chiropractic began (after DD’s natural misconception that it was a cure for deafness), and people with other conditions got well, the Founder concluded that vertebral subluxation was the cause of all diseases, that it was “the magic bullet” (another misconception). This distinguished it from drugless therapy which advocated heat, cold, nutritional, mechanical and (later) electrical devices to treat different diseases. Those that did the latter were categorized as mixers at that time, by DD. Many mixers became naturopaths and ,(I understand) some still exist today. In the early history, with the beginning of licensure, some states (Pennsylvania being one) even regulated chiropractors under the heading as “drugless physicians”. As the licensing laws continued to be enacted, they restricted chiropractors from taking care of people with certain communicable diseases. That should have been an indication to chiropractors that their objective was not in the area of disease. It became necessary for traditional chiropractors to rule out these diseases (the law would not allow addressing them) either by differential diagnosis or some other medical diagnosis. Usually it was the medical quarantine notice on the front door. It was obvious that a “chiropractic diagnosis” was necessary, or, the chiropractor had to take the position that BJ and Morris had demonstrated in the Morikubo case that chiropractors did not address disease either by use of drugs (medicine) or manipulation and other procedures (osteopathy). Both of which were demonstrated in that 1906 Wisconsin case. Palmer and his attorney maintained that chiropractic was based upon the innate intelligence of the body healing through 33 natural laws. Chiropractors who were taking care of people with communicable diseases at the time, (Spanish Influenza and Typhus) were seeing “results” with people having two highly communicable diseases that would take the lives of millions worldwide, and be illegal for chiropractors to address, except for the fact that thanks to the Morikubo case chiropractors were not addressing these diseases but merely enabling the forces of the innate intelligence of the body to be more fully expressed. Chiropractors had to have a different objective or be guilty of violating the legal statutes. Traditional chiropractors ignored that historical fact in the 70’s and maintained that they needed to diagnose and determine which conditions could be reasonably expected to respond to chiropractic.
