Doubtless this proved that accidental manipulations of the ribs helps
clear up the congestion about the real consolidation and reduces some
of the dull area. Very likely this explains some of the cases of
partial or real results from spondylotherapy. Naturally, scientific
osteopathic treatment would necessarily magnify such results very much.
It is a great wonder with the obvious failure of medical treatment in
pneumonia, that at least some crude from of manipulative treatment has
not been devised by those practitioners. We have already mentioned that
the treatment of post-operative cases varies mainly in the manner of
applying it. In other words, when we raise the ribs we keep the patient
on his back, in treating the spinal centers we treat with patient on
his back, and the physician who has no grip in his hands will not be
able to treat a post-operative pneumonia to any advantage.
In these cases one has to get at the patient’s back by reaching under
and the weight of the patient helps to give the treatment, but a strong
grip is necessary. It is much safer for the wound to handle the patient
in this way but not infrequently beginners wear their knuckles pretty
nearly off before they get the finer technique; after which it is easy.
In raising the ribs there is no more difficulty in treating in this
position than there is with a patient who can sit up or turn from side
to side and in some cases a patient can, of course, be partially turned.
Theory is all right but in these cases practice has been added to it
in something over three hundred cases treated in this manner, and in
this manner only. I have had no case die. None of my cases had oxygen
and none of them had strychnin or alcohol unless it was a person who
had used alcohol constantly or daily and in these cases I consider that
the system has become sufficiently used to it that it is practically
a food and that sudden withdrawal is apt to bring on delirium. It is
not necessary in those cases that indulge deeply now and then, but it
is advisable in those that take a small amount regularly, just as they
take food. These patients are used to a constant heart stimulant and
its withdrawal is also apt to be reflected in the heart action. These
are the only cases in which I have ever authorized anything in the way
of a chemical stimulant of the heart during pneumonia.
You will undoubtedly recall that in reading the newspaper accounts of
men who are big enough and prominent enough to have bulletins in the
newspapers when they are dying, that almost universally the next to the
last bulletin was that oxygen is being administered. The last bulletin
announces the time of death. You will also note that in case the
patient lives that oxygen then is not mentioned, and a few days later
the patient is all right. My observation is that the use of oxygen
may attract the attention of the family, it may attract the attention
of the patient, but as for any actual benefit on the patient I do not
believe it is in the least helpful, and that the only treatment for
pneumonia is osteopathic. I am so convinced of it that I am using only
that method.
As to strychnin, some say strychnin must be given. Some say it must be
given at the crisis, and others say it must be given from the inception
of the disease. I do not believe the majority of cases will do as well
under strychnin. I know they will not do as well under strychnin as
under osteopathic treatment. I will not say they will not do as well as
if under no treatment. It is possible that there would be an occasion
for its use at the crisis, and I have seen such cases, and I have used
it while studying medicine. I used it at the crisis, and I used it in
cases where I am convinced that it helped them over the crisis, but I
am also convinced now that by osteopathic treatment they would have
done still better and the crisis would not have been so acute. In other
words what strychnin does in favorable cases, osteopathic treatment
does better in all cases.
In our post-operative cases study the charts and you will see that
they do not have the acutely violent crisis that usually occurs under
other treatment. They are under better control and if we can get them
near the beginning, as we usually do, we can keep up the resistance so
that where they would otherwise have a hard crisis they have an easy
one. Instead of having a temperature of 105, pulse 165, respiration
70, or such a condition, they are more apt to run a temperature of
102, pulse 120, respiration 35 or 40 and they go through it without
that suddenness and acuteness that is common under other methods of
treatment.
In several instances, as an example of showing how this resistance is
kept up, I had letters from boys in the camps. One letter told of a
wide epidemic of severe tonsillitis. In one group of soldiers there
were three osteopaths who treated all the men and this was the only
group that was not sent to quarantine. This group developed sore throat
and was treated osteopathically and the sore throats checked so that
quarantine was unnecessary.
Among the detailed reports in the A. M. A. Journal there will be
nothing about this, nor about many other instances where osteopathic
treatment, given by men forced to remain in the ranks, has done
things that medicine cannot do. These examples are too frequent to be
coincidents. If I had had three cases of post-operative pneumonia and
they had all got well, it would not be surprising. If I had ten cases
and they all got well, there are medical hospitals that have been this
lucky. But there are no medical hospitals in the world that can report
one hundred cases or two hundred cases or three hundred with developed
pneumonia and all lived. The percentage of pneumonia cases that die
now in medical hospitals, is much less than formerly. But the cause of
this is not vaccine, antitoxin or drugs. It is due to the fact that
pneumonia cases now, like typhoid, are given very little medicine and
are turned over to general nursing treatment; that is, in the best
medical hospitals.
The mortality is in inverse ratio to the drugs given. The advance
medical teaching is against so much drugs in pneumonia, though of
course the hick doctors use it because they are practicing medicine of
the by-gone age, before Andrew Taylor Still forced on the world the
idea partly started by homeopathy, that the less drugs the better.
Homeopathy failed in not quite discarding drugs and in not having a
substitute that reproved drugs.
As a matter of interest I wish to mention that while in medical college
I had the advantage of being taught surgery by the greatest surgeon
that ever lived, John B. Murphy. I only wish that circumstances could
have permitted me to have shown him what osteopathy could do in
post-operative conditions, because Murphy was a broad minded man and
no man living ever thought less of orthodox medicine and old fashioned
drug treatment than Murphy.
He and the Old Doctor would have been great friends had they ever met.
Murphy, whom I considered a most wonderful surgeon, and whose skill I
never hope to approach, stated to me many times while a student that he
lost more cases from post-operative pneumonia than any other condition
and that in upper abdominal conditions like gall bladder, stomach, and
similar operations, post-operative pneumonia constituted the most of
his mortality.
This great man was afraid of post-operative pneumonia, while I, a much
less skilled surgeon, am no more afraid of post-operative pneumonia
than I am of something occurring in a distant state because with
osteopathic treatment, we have eliminated post-operative pneumonia as a
fatal condition.