What do you mean, Dr. Barge, when you say chiropractic is non-therapeutic? The majority of chiropractors use some form of therapy. Does that mean we aren't chiropractors? No, no, no, that is not what I mean at all. What I am stating is that chiropractic care is non-therapeutic -- it provides no therapy for disease. This is the original concept of chiropractic so clearly articulated by D.D. Palmer when he said:
"Chiropractic is not a healing system. It has nothing in common with any other system and is not therapeutical; does not use remedies; does not treat, cure or heal.
"A chiropractor is not a therapeutist; he is not interested in discovering or in applying remedies. To be versed in therapeutics would be to be skilled in the use and applications of remedies. Chiropractors do not use remedies."
Once understood, this concept opens the mind of the practitioner to the limitless horizons of chiropractic practice. We are not limited to the musculoskeletal domain, we are not limited in respect to the diseases we can see in practice, we hold forth no therapy for disease. We do not "treat" disease. Our efforts in subluxation correction work as well in the epileptic as they do in a person afflicted with sciatic syndrome or brachialgia. They work as well in the mongoloid, the baby, the adult or the dog, for that matter. If subluxation is involved in a health problem, we can be of help. And this is exactly how chiropractic care has "worked" since its very inception. This is why so many people have hailed chiropractic as curing them of a myriad of maladies that afflict mankind. Did the chiropractor tell the patient he had a cure for the disease the patient had? Heavens no, but Mary's earaches went away, so what does Mary say? Chiropractic cures earaches.
As the public perceived chiropractic in the past, it was clearly a drugless and bloodless alternative to medical care for a multitude of health problems. When interviewing a new patient, the chiropractor would simply say something like this: "I'll examine your spine to see if nerve interference is involved in your health problem and, if so, we can be of help." With palpation, nerve tracing, x-ray, and instrumentation, the chiropractor determined the subluxation and corrected it; the rest is history. In reality, the symptomatic diagnosis had little to do with the chiropractic care. In other words, the chiropractor did not (and still does not) need a differential diagnosis to go to work. Now, I'm not saying that an overall assessment of the patient's health problem should not be made by the chiropractor; I'm not saying that we should not monitor body function. What I am saying is that we are not a profession intended to be limited by medicine's therapeutic approach to disease syndromes.
Open your perception to your worth, doctor; open your mind's eye to enhance your own self-image.
Dr. Bernie Siegel stated:
"There are no incurable diseases, only incurable people."
B.J, Palmer stated:
"Limitless innate, limited matter."
Do you understand that these two statements mean exactly the same thing? There is not a disease known to man that has not had a spontaneous remission (limitless innate/no incurable disease); yet some people do not respond to subluxation correction (limited matter/incurable people). Go back to Stephenson's Chiropractic Textbook (Greenbook) and read again, "Constructive and Destructive Survival Values." Things that baffle you become perfectly clear in the light of increased understanding.
No, chiropractic is not limited by the name of the disease that a person has; if the patient has a subluxation chiropractic can provide help. How much help is determined by the individualistic survival values of the person involved. And remember, it is not up to you to judge innate and "never remove hope from a patient."
We, as chiropractors, provide no therapy for disease. That is why the term SMT is so inappropriate. Therapy used in chiropractic is ancillary to our methods of subluxation correction. Pre and post chiropractic care so to speak.
Open your eyes to the full spectrum of our unique care, doctors. We have a practice with a defined and limited scope but one that has broad body implications. We do not treat disease, only the body provides treatment, as truly only the body heals. And the only thing any doctor can do is remove an obstacle to healing -- the medical person with an antibiotic, the surgeon with the knife, the psychologist and psychiatrist with mental mechanisms, and the chiropractor by subluxation correction.
And remember my friends, that subluxation is either the cause of, or concomitant to all diseases of mankind. "Limitless innate, limited matter," once understood, will make everything understandable and will provide chiropractic with a limitless horizon.
"Enuf said."
Next time Dr. Barge speaks on diagnosis.
Fred H. Barge, D.C., Ph.C.
La Crosse, Wisconsin
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