A Different Perspective
Interestingly, both William Jenner and D.D. Palmer come up with their procedures through anecdotal findings. Jenner by noticing that milkmaids who got cowpox seemed to be immune to smallpox. Palmer, while practicing magnetic healing, noted that certain medical conditions were alleviated by moving bones. At the time of their respective procedures there were probably hundreds of other procedures that were being performed to alleviate human ailments, everything from bleeding to magnetic healing, none of which are around today. Most of them we never heard of because they were not noteworthy. They have passed from the scene because they did not work or if they worked they did more harm than good.
Chiropractic has lasted for 110 years because it obviously does something. It has more practitioners than ever before in history, millions of satisfied people for over a century, many of whom come back on a regular basis. All of this despite the fact that very few people understand the objective of (objective straight) chiropractic. The success of chiropractic with a multitude of conditions must mean something. Anecdotal success must have some validity especially when it far surpasses a few milkmaids. Some people would ascribe chiropractic’s numerous successes with varied conditions to positive thinking, coincidence, faith or some other illegitimate factor. However, all the different successes with millions of people for 100 plus years has to be something more than coincidence or mass hysteria. Chiropractic had to possess something in order to succeed, despite the opposition of the medical community who was convinced that no single procedure could be the cure for everything. Millions of intelligent and reasonable people, including legislators and insurance companies, concluded that chiropractic worked on some level.
Along came the objective straight chiropractor who presented a reason why chiropractic “works” for some people and not for others, why certain conditions get well in some and not in others, why chiropractic appears to have had some success with all kinds of medical ailments. They presented the reasonable explanation that chiropractic is not a treatment or cure for medical conditions (which should make the medical community happy). Chiropractic does one thing, it allows the body to work better, to function at a higher level, to be a little bit healthier. That is the reason for apparent success in so many and varied conditions. A body working better has greater potential to heal all types of conditions. It is also the reason for “chiropractic failures.” Even though chiropractic adjustments enable the body to work better, sometimes that improved function is not sufficient to enable the body to heal itself. So despite working better, the body cannot heal and either the person must learn to live with a condition or seek relief in the therapeutic realm.
Objective straight chiropractors further reasoned that if the body works better with adjustments in some people, enough to get well from some conditions, and if chiropractic is not correcting the cause of disease, then it must make the body work better in all people, those who do not get well, those who have no problems or conditions and everyone in between. They further reasoned that a body working better because of no interference will also benefit in other areas of human function besides disease and health. While we cannot measure quantatively the improvement in a person under chiropractic care, the fact that varied and serious conditions have been known to get well, suggests that the improvement must be of a significant nature. It also follows logically that failure to keep the body free of nerve interference must be a significant factor in the loss of health or decreased ability to function in all areas of life.
This idea was so logical to objective straight chiropractors (and most other chiropractors for that matter) that they began to have themselves and their families cared for on a regular basis. They further determined that if it was good and necessary for themselves and their families, then the idea of regularly checking the spine for nerve interference and removing it when found was good for all of humanity and perhaps there were enough people out there who would agree and want this type of care for themselves and their families. After all there are millions of people who drink bottled water, take supplements, eat nutritionally, exercise regularly and in many other ways take care of themselves for no other reason than because their body will work better. They concluded that if they can find enough people interested in this type of care, they can not only make a living but they can contribute to the betterment of society. That is how this unique approach to chiropractic with its lifetime maintenance care developed.
There are many interesting similarities between vaccination and non-therapeutic chiropractic. With all that introduction, here is the contrast that I find interesting. Both non therapeutic chiropractic and vaccination are controversial procedures even within their own professions. Many medical doctors do not advocate vaccination. Both are done to address a problem that is not causing a symptomatic condition. Both procedures are claimed by their advocates to be important to life and health yet both address a rather nebulous problem. Neither achieves permanent results and must be performed again. There is no way of knowing scientifically that if you do not have these procedures done that the quality of your life will in any way be lessened.
Those are the similarities. The contrasts, as I see it, are much more striking. Chiropractic addresses the individual. While everyone needing an adjustment receives one, the result of that restoration of normal nerve integrity and innate intelligence control is different in every person, depending upon the recuperative abilities and the potentials of the individual. We really cannot say that whatever improvement in the quality of a person’s life has occurred that it was the direct result of chiropractic care. A vaccination on the other hand, is designed to achieve the same outcome in every person. Yet we cannot say that the vaccination achieved its objective in any individual person. Perhaps they would never have gotten the disease whether they had been vaccinated or not. The adjustment always achieves its desired outcome (with the understanding that the thrust did indeed result in an adjustment). The vaccination, even if administered properly will sometimes not provide its desired effect. The adjustment does not have a negative side-effect, the vaccination does.
While the adjustment is a chiropractic procedure and vaccination is a medical procedure, there are similarities in the accomplishment of their respective objectives but there are also major differences. The interesting point is that both came about by anecdotal findings. Neither can scientifically demonstrate a perceptible change in an individual’s life. Yet, vaccination, with its possible side-effects is largely accepted by the scientific community and chiropractic with no demonstrated side-effects has yet to achieve any level of recognition. Odd isn’t it?v21n2
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