CHIROPRACTIC APOLOGETICS PART VI The Logical Approach
One of the most outstanding characteristics of chiropractic in general, and straight chiropractic in particular, is the logic it is based upon. Perhaps it is not so much the logic of straight chiropractic that is striking but the illogic of everything other approach in comparison. There are basically three approaches to the practice of chiropractic. The first is practicing chiropractic as a drugless treatment of disease. In order to practice in this manner, you must know how to properly treat diseases. You must know what is the most effective treatment for that disease, providing you want to best serve the patient. Using the one you like best, the one you are most comfortable with, or the one the state allows you to use is not in the patient's best interest. To determine what is the best treatment, you must know all the alternatives and how they help. This of course necessitates a knowledge of, and an ability to, practice medicine. Why? Because for most diseases, (excluding musculoskeletal) medicine and/or surgery either by itself or in combination with a drugless approach constitutes the best treatment. At this point, the chiropractor cannot use medicine or surgery, therefore he is faced with a number of alternatives. Unless he wants to be strictly a referral service he must by some manner become part of the "medical team." Much of our legal effort against medicine is not so much to chastise them for past vituperations, but to force them to like us and allow us to work with them. The problem with this tack is that you cannot force people to like you. At best we will just encourage them to learn to do what we are doing. But they are already doing it, and learning to adjust spines is really not that difficult. After all, most chiropractic colleges relegate it to a few semesters in the curriculum. When the medics learn adjusting, they will not have to accept us into the country club and may even be able to hurt us economically. Clearly getting them to work with us is not logical. The only other approach the disease-treating chiropractor can take is to confine the diseases he treats to an area where the "drugless non-invasive" approach he utilizes almost always seems to be superior to the drug/surgery approach. This is why most disease-treating chiropractors confine their efforts to musculoskeletal conditions. This approach will probably meet with the same results as the first: the M.D.'s will eventually be doing it. Worse yet, it denies people the true benefits of chiropractic care. Clearly there is no logic to using chiropractic as a drugless treatment of disease. The second approach is from another part of our profession that claims to hold to the philosophy of chiropractic. However, the chiropractic philosophy follows a line of logic called deduction. We begin with a Major Premise, the existence of a universal intelligence. From that we draw out conclusions which themselves form principles. The point is that the deductive process draws us to the logical conclusion that the chiropractic objective is a unique one which necessitates unique procedures. Utilizing medical, therapeutic procedures to try to achieve the chiropractic objective of correcting vertebral subluxation is illogical. Similarly, following medical diagnostic procedures to achieve the chiropractic objective of locating vertebral subluxation is equally illogical. This is where the "straights who diagnose" represented by the largest chiropractic colleges, fail to follow a line of reason. The third approach, straight chiropractic, acknowledges that there are many effective ways to treat disease, including drugs, surgery and drugless methods. To determine which is/are the most effective in any given situation necessitates expertise in all of them, something no intelligent, sane chiropractor would claim to have. It also recognizes that to utilize medical procedures to achieve a unique non-medical objective is irrational. If you choose to be a chiropractor, then straight chiropractic is the only approach that makes the slightest bit of sense.
THERAPEUTIC CHIROPRACTIC
Chiropractors will use therapeutic measures and justify it, saying they do not want the patient to leave without an adjustment, and the therapeutic measure helps to relieve the pain so an adjustment can be given. "The end justifies the means." The same chiropractor will do a poor or inadequate job of educating to the need for regular care and thus allow the patient to walk around with subluxations, not for days, but for weeks, months, or years, between visits that take place only when symptoms appear. Dr. Doug Gates once said, "the major challenge to a straight chiropractor is always accomplishing his objective without compromising his principle." It usually comes down to an issue of whether we act on principle or based on some other reason. If we act on principle, we must say, "I do not know what is normal for the patient. I do know that subluxation is abnormal. The muscle spasm, swelling, tension, or pain may be normal." If we act on principle we will never add a therapeutic measure. If we act on some other basis, then our decisions will vary. If you act in your own best interest you may refer out, fearful of malpractice, or you may not, fearful of losing the patient. Often the chiropractor will try to justify a therapeutic measure, saying, "if I don't give them some relief they will go to the M.D. and never have subluxations corrected." I would suspect that most chiropractors are more concerned with monetary loss. But either way, the issue is acting on principle. Acting on principle is always in the best interest of everyone, yourself, the patient, and the future of chiropractic. If you treat their pain, even if it is to better facilitate the adjustment, you have still treated their pain. You have sent out a very important message to the patient: pain is important, it is directly related to health, it is treated by chiropractors and it is inextricably a part of the chiropractic practice. That patient will never see chiropractic as anything more than a means or more correctly part of the means to relieving pain, and that is the greatest disservice that can be done to any patient.
OBJECTIVES
Can we correct vertebral subluxations or aid in correcting vertebral subluxations by increasing the quality of the matter? Apparently that is what some chiropractors attempt to do by using therapeutic procedures. It may be possible to accomplish that objective, but that philosophy is not chiropractic. In fact, it is medicine. It is medicine's objective whether they realize it or not. If people get well (and by well I do not mean temporary relief but true health), it is because DIS-EASE has been corrected. Wellness or health only occurs when the body is receiving a full complement of mental impulses from the innate intelligence of the body. People become asymptomatic for short or long periods of time because the body, in spite of continued nerve interference, can often muster sufficient strength to bring the person back to a higher level of function. But that is not restoration of health or wholeness. If the spark plug to one of my car cylinders is not firing, I may be able to ride on 5 cylinders but that is not a healthy car. It was designed to run on six. Medicine can occasionally and usually temporarily increase the quality of the matter. This increase is called treating diseases. Medicine tries to change the matter. Occasionally, usually by dumb luck, they succeed. When they succeed in changing matter so that the body can restore normal nerve supply by correcting its subluxations, people get well. More often they do not succeed. That has been the reason for the failure of medicine over the centuries and the reason for chiropractic's existence and its success. We do not attempt to change or improve the matter so that it can correct a vertebral subluxation, instead we give the innate intelligence of the body and external invasive force to work with, circumventing its limitations of matter so that it can correct the vertebral subluxation itself. You can take either approach in the restoration of health. Improve the matter so the body can correct its own vertebral subluxation that's medicine. Or give the body an innate force it cannot otherwise get so that it can correct the subluxation that's chiropractic. People will only get well when the restoration of vital mental impulse has occurred. Either method will do it. Chiropractic does it consistently and effectively. Medicine does it occasionally and unintentionally.
