The question of terminology, semantics, and definitions constantly creates discussion, dissension, and division within our profession. (How’s that for alliteration?) An article recently appeared in a chiropractic publication in response to a “guest editorial” by a student decrying the straights’ preoccupation with semantics. I will not waste time and space duplicating the editor’s response, which was quite good, but address a few other points in the guest editorial by quoting a nineteenth century British Historian Thomas Carlyle. Carlyle’s quote “Be not a slave of words” set the theme of the editorial. This same Carlyle once said, concerning the American War Between the States, “There they are cutting each other’s throats, because one half of them prefer hiring their servants for life, and the other by the hour.” I would like to have seen Mr. Carlyle explain to a black man that the difference between slave and servant is only a matter of semantics!
Words are important. Every one of us practices chiropractic by a law which defines in words what we do. I am forever amazed how the same people who say we are quibbling over words such as diagnosis and analysis, treatment and adjustment, misalignment and subluxation can be so interested in changing the wording of our state laws. We all realize that wording is important. The writer says that we practice a wide spectrum of chiropractic and he is “suspicious of anyone who tries to reduce that spectrum to black and white.” Even if we agree that there are areas of gray, we must agree that they are not white and they are not black. If you choose to practice in the gray that does not ignore the existence of other areas. We may not agree where the shading is no longer black or no longer white but we all recognize there is a point.
In our profession almost everyone agrees that administrating drugs and surgery are not chiropractic. Even the most ardent mixers agree that we should not do those things. So they are drawing lines of demarcation. Everyone draws lines. Words just allow us to more clearly draw those lines. The more discriminating the words, the more clear the lines. I believe it was Ayn Rand who said that “principled people use words to clarify and unprincipled people use them to confuse.” It seems that those who are attacking or belittling the efforts of those who would try to use words to clarify are suspect in their motives.
One final principle of language. A word’s meaning is determined by its usage. If we are ever to have an impact upon society, to get them to understand what chiropractic is (and I believe every chiropractor, whatever he thinks it is, would want that) then we must be concerned with how we use words and what words we use. We may not be slaves to words but we are what we think and we think with words. If we think in medical terminology then our actions will follow our thinking. That will be destructive to our future.v5n4