If our medical brethren and the laity could read some of the acrimonious
discussions on the question of using adjuncts, they would certainly be
impressed with the exactness (?) of Osteopathic science.
There is one idea of Osteopathy that even the popular mind has grasped,
and that is that it is essentially finding "lesions" and correcting them.
Yet the question has been very prominent and pertinent among Osteopaths:
"Are you a lesion Osteopath?" Think of it, gentlemen, asking an Osteopath
if he is a "lesionist"! Yet there are plenty of Osteopaths who are stupid
enough (or honest enough) not to be able to find bones "subluxed" every
time they look at a patient. Practitioners who really want to do their
patrons good will use adjuncts even if they are denounced by the
stand-patters.
I believe every conscientious Osteopath must sometimes feel that it is
safer to use rational remedies than to rely on "bone setting," or
"inhibiting a center," but for the grafter it is not so spectacular and
involves more hard work.
The stand-patters of the American Osteopathic Association have not
eliminated all trouble when they get Osteopaths to stick to the "bone
setting, inhibiting" idea. The chiropractic man threatens to steal their
thunder here. The Chiropractor has found that when it comes to using
mysterious maneuvers and manipulations as bases for mind cure, one thing
is about as good as another, except that the more mysterious a thing
looks the better it works. So the Chiropractor simply gives his healing
"thrusts" or his wonderful "adjustments," touches the buttons along the
spine as it were, when--presto! disease has flown before his healing touch
and blessed health has come to reign instead!
The Osteopath denounces the Chiropractor as a brazen fraud who has stolen
all that is good in Chiropractics (if there _is_ anything good) from
Osteopathy. But Chiropractics follows so closely what the "old liner"
calls the true theory of Osteopathy that, between him and the drifter who
gives an hour of crude massage, or uses the forbidden accessories, the
true Osteopath has a hard time maintaining the dignity (?) of Osteopathy
and keeping its practitioners from drifting.
Some of the most ardent supporters of true Osteopathy I have ever known
have drifted entirely away from it. After practicing two or three years,
abusing medicine and medical men all the time, and proclaiming to the
people continually that they had in Osteopathy all that a sick world could
ever need, it is suddenly learned that the "Osteopath is gone." He has
"silently folded his tent and stolen away," and where has he gone? He has
gone to a medical college to study that same medicine he has so
industriously abused while he was gathering in the shekels as an
Osteopath. Going to learn and practice the science he has so persistently
denounced as a fraud and a curse to humanity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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