THEORY AND PRACTICE OF OSTEOPATHY.
Infallible, Touch-the-Button System that Always Cured--Indefinite
Movements and Manipulations--Wealth of Undeveloped Scientific
Facts--Osteopaths Taking M.D. Course--The Standpatter and the
Drifter--The "Lesionist"--"Bone Setting"--"Inhibiting a
Center"--Chiropractics--"Finest Anatomists in the World"--How to Cure
Torticollis, Goitre and Enteric Troubles--A Successful
Osteopath--Timid Old Maids--Osteopathic Philanthropy.
How desperately those students worked. Many of them were men and women
with gray heads, who had found themselves stranded at a time of life when
they should have been able to retire on a competency. They had staked
their little all on this last venture, and what was before them if they
should fail heaven only knew. How eagerly they looked forward to the time
when they should have struggled through the lessons in anatomy, chemistry,
physiology, symptomatology and all the rest, and should be ready to
receive the wonderful principles of Osteopathy they were to apply in
performing the miraculous cures that were to make them wealthy and famous.
Need I tell the physician who was a conscientious student of anatomy in
his school days, that there was disappointment when the time came to enter
the class in "theory and practice" of Osteopathy?
There had been vague ideas of a systematized, infallible, touch-the-button
system that _always_ cured. Instead, we were instructed in a lot of
indefinite movements and manipulations that somehow left us speculating as
to just how much of it all was done for effect.
We had heard so often that Osteopathy was a complete satisfying science
_that did things specifically_! Now it began to dawn upon us that there
was indeed a "wealth of undeveloped scientific facts" in Osteopathy, as
those glittering circulars had said when they thought to attract young men
ambitious for original research. They had said, "Much yet remains to be
discovered." Some of us wondered if the "undeveloped" and "undiscovered"
scientific facts were not the main constituents of the "science."
The students expected something exact and tangible, and how eagerly they
grasped at anything in the way of bringing quick results in curing the
sick.
If Osteopathy is so complete, why did so many students, after they had
received everything the learned (?) professors had to impart, procure
Juettner's "Modern Physio-Therapy" and Ling's "Manual Therapy" and Rosse's
"Cures Without Drugs" and Kellogg's work on "Hydrotherapy"? They felt that
they needed all they could get.
It was customary for the students to begin "treating" after they had been
in school a few months, and medical men will hardly be surprised to know
that they worked with more faith in their healing powers and performed
more wonderful (?) cures in their freshman year than they ever did
afterward.
I have in mind a student, one of the brightest I ever met, who read a
cheap book on Osteopathic practice, went into a community where he was
unknown, and practiced as an Osteopathic physician. In a few months he had
made enough money to pay his way through an Osteopathic college, which he
entered professing to believe that Osteopathy would cure all the ills
flesh is heir to, but which he left two years later to take a medical
course. He secured his D.O. degree, but I notice that it is his M.D.
degree he flourishes with pride.
Can students be blamed for getting a little weak in faith when men who
told them that the great principles of Osteopathy were sufficient to cure
_everything_, have been known to backslide so far as to go and take
medical courses themselves?
How do you suppose it affects students of an Osteopathic college to read
in a representative journal that the secretary of their school, and the
greatest of all its boosters, calls medical men into his own family when
there is sickness in it?
There are many men and women practicing to-day who try to be honest and
conscientious, and by using all the good in Osteopathy, massage, Swedish
movements, hydrotherapy, and all the rest of the adjuncts of
physio-therapy, do a great deal of good. The practitioner who does use
these agencies, however, is denounced by the stand-patters as a "drifter."
They say he is not a true Osteopath, but a mongrel who is belittling the
great science. That circular letter from the secretary of the American
Osteopathic Association said that one of the greatest needs of
organization was to preserve Osteopathy in its primal purity as it came
from its founder, A. T. Still.
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.
The intelligent, conscientious Osteopath who dares to brave the scorn of
the stand-patter and use all the legitimate adjuncts of Osteopathy found
in physio-therapy, may do a great deal of good as a physician. I have
found many physicians willing to acknowledge this, and even recommend the
services of such an Osteopath when physio-therapy was indicated.
When a physician, however, meets a fellow who claims to have in his
Osteopathy a wonderful system, complete and all-sufficient to cope with
any and all diseases, and that his system is founded on a knowledge of the
relation and function of the various parts and organs of the body such as
no other school of therapeutics has ever been able to discover, then he
knows that he has met a man of the same mental and moral calibre as the
shyster in his own school. He knows he has met a fellow who is exploiting
a thing, that may be good in its way and place, as a graft. And he knows
that this grafter gets his wonderful cures largely as any other quack gets
his; the primary effects of his "scientific manipulations" are on the
minds of those treated.
The intelligent physician knows that the Osteopath got his boastedly
superior knowledge of anatomy mostly from the same text-books and same
class of cadavers that other physicians had to master if they graduated
from a reputable school. All that talk we have heard so much about the
Osteopaths being the "finest anatomists in the world" sounds plausible,
and is believed by the laity generally.
The quotation I gave above has been much used in Osteopathic literature
as coming from an eminent medical man. What foundation is there for such a
belief? The Osteopath _may_ be a good anatomist. He has about the same
opportunities to learn anatomy the medical student has. If he is a good
and conscientious student he may consider his anatomy of more importance
than does the medical student who is not expecting to do much surgery. If
he is a natural shyster and shirk he can get through a course in
Osteopathy and get his diploma, and this diploma may be about the only
proof he could ever give that he is a "superior anatomist."
Great stress has always been laid by Osteopaths upon the amount of study
and research done by their students on the cadaver. I want to give you
some specimens of the learning of the man (an M.D.) who presided over the
dissecting-room when I pursued my "profound research" on the "lateral
half." This great man, whose superior knowledge of anatomy, I presume,
induced by the wise management of the college to employ him as a
demonstrator, in an article written for the organ of the school expresses
himself thus:
"It is needless to say that the first impression of an M. D. would not
be favorable to Osteopathy, because he has spent years fixing in his
mind that if you had a bad case of torticollis not to touch it, but
give a man morphine or something of the same character with an
external blister or hot application and in a week or ten days he would
be all right. In the meanwhile watch the patient's general health,
relieve the induced constipation by suitable means and rearrange what
he has disarranged in his treatment. On the other hand, let the
Osteopath get hold of this patient, and with his _vast_ and we might
say _perfect_ knowledge of anatomy, he at once, with no other tools
than his hands, inhibits the nerves supplying the affected parts, and
in five minutes the patient can freely move his head and shoulders,
entirely relieved from pain. Would not the medical man be angry? Would
he not feel like wiping off the earth with all the Osteopaths? Doctor,
with your medical education a course in Osteopathy would teach you
that it is not necessary to subject your patients to myxedema by
removing the thyroid gland to cure goitre. You would not have to lie
awake nights studying means to stop one of those troublesome bowel
complaints in children, nor to insist upon the enforced diet in
chronic diarrhea, and a thousand other things which are purely
physiological and are not done by any magical presto change, but by
methods which are perfectly rational if you will only listen long
enough to have them explained to you. I will agree that at first
impression all methods look alike to the medical man, but when
explained by an intelligent teacher they will bring their just
reward."
Gentlemen of the medical profession, study the above
carefully--punctuation, composition, profound wisdom and all. Surely you
did not read it when it was given to the world a few years ago, or you
would all have been converted to Osteopathy then, and the medical
profession left desolate. We have heard many bad things of medical men,
but never (until we learned it from one who was big-brained enough to
accept Osteopathy when its great truths dawned upon him) did we know that
you are so dull of intellect that it takes you "years to fix in your minds
that if you had a bad case of torticollis not to touch it but to give a
man morphine."
And how pleased Osteopaths are to learn from this scholar that the
Osteopath can "take hold" of a case of torticollis, "and with his vast and
we might say perfect knowledge of anatomy" inhibit the nerves and have the
man cured in five minutes. We were glad to learn this great truth from
this learned ex-M.D., as we never should have known, otherwise, that
Osteopathy is so potent.
I have had cases of torticollis in my practice, and thought I had done
well if after a half hour of hard work massaging contracted muscles I had
benefited the case.
And note the relevancy of these questions, "Would not the medical man be
angry? Would he not feel like wiping off the earth all the Osteopaths?"
Gentlemen, can you explain your ex-brother's meaning here? Surely you are
not all so hard-hearted that you would be angry because a poor wry-necked
fellow had been cured in five minutes.
To be serious, I ask you to think of "the finest anatomists in the world"
doing their "original research" work in the dissecting-room under the
direction of a man of the scholarly attainments indicated by the
composition and thought of the above article. Do you see now how
Osteopaths get a "vast and perfect knowledge of anatomy"?
Do you suppose that the law of "the survival of the fittest" determines
who continues in the practice of Osteopathy and succeeds? Is it true worth
and scholarly ability that get a big reputation of success among medical
men? I know, and many medical men know from competition with him (if they
would admit that such a fellow may be a competitor), that the ignoramus
who as a physician is the product of a diploma mill often has a bigger
reputation and performs more wonderful cures (?) than the educated
Osteopath who really mastered the prescribed course but is too
conscientious to assume responsibility for human life when he is not sure
that he can do all that might be done to save life.
I once met an Osteopath whose literary attainments had never reached the
rudiments of an education. He had never really comprehended a single
lesson of his entire course. He told me that he was then on a vacation to
get much-needed rest. He had such a large practice that the physical labor
of it was wearing him out. I knew of this fellow's qualifications, but I
thought he might be one of those happy mortals who have the faculty of
"doing things," even if they cannot learn the theory. To learn the secret
of this fellow's success, if I could, I let him treat me. I had some
contracted muscles that were irritating nerves and holding joints in tense
condition, a typical case, if there are any, for an Osteopathic treatment.
The fellow began his "treatment." I expected him to do some of that
"expert Osteopathic diagnosing" that you have heard of, but he began in an
aimless desultory way, worked almost an hour, found nothing specific, did
nothing but give me a poor unsystematic massage. He was giving me a
"popular treatment."
In many towns people have come to estimate the value of an Osteopathic
treatment by its duration. People used to say to me, "You don't treat as
long as Dr. ----, who was here before you," and say it in a way indicating
that they were hardly satisfied they had gotten their money's worth. Some
of them would say: "He treated me an hour for seventy-five cents." Does it
seem funny to talk of adjusting lesions on one person for an hour at a
time, three times a week?
My picture of incompetency and apparent success of incompetents, is not
overdrawn. The other day I had a marked copy of a local paper from a town
in California. It was a flattering write-up of an old classmate. The
doctor's automobile was mentioned, and he had marked with a cross a fine
auto shown in a picture of the city garage. This fellow had been
considered by all the Simple Simon of the class, inferior in almost every
attribute of true manliness, yet now he flourishes as one of those of our
class to whose success the school can "point with pride."
It is interesting to read the long list of "changes of location" among
Osteopaths, yet between the lines there is a sad story that may be read.
How often I have followed these changes. First, "Doctor Blank has located
in Philadelphia, with twenty-five patients for the first month and rapidly
growing practice." A year or so after another item tells that "Doctor
Blank has located in San Francisco with bright prospects." Then "Doctor
Blank has returned to Missouri on account of his wife's health, and
located in ----, where he has our best wishes for success." Their career
reminds us of Goldsmith's lines:
"As the hare whom horn and hounds pursue
Pants to the place from whence at first he flew."
There has been many a tragic scene enacted upon the Osteopathic stage, but
the curtain has not been raised for the public to behold them. How many
timid old maids, after saving a few hundred dollars from wages received
for teaching school, have been persuaded that they could learn Osteopathy
while their shattered nerves were repaired and they were made young and
beautiful once more by a course of treatment in the clinics of the school.
Then they would be ready to go out to occupy a place of dignity and honor,
and treat ten to thirty patients per month at twenty-five dollars per
patient.
Gentlemen of the medical profession, from what you know of the aggressive
spirit that it takes to succeed in professional life to-day (to say
nothing of the physical strength required in the practice of Osteopathy),
what per cent. of these timid old maids do you suppose have "panted to the
place from whence at first they flew," after leaving their pitiful little
savings with the benefactors of humanity who were devoting their splendid
talents to the cause of Osteopathy?
If any one doubts that some Osteopathic schools are conducted from other
than philanthropic motives, let him read what the _Osteopathic Physician_
said of a new school founded in California. Of all the fraud, bare-faced
shystering, and flagrant rascality ever exposed in any profession, the
circumstances of the founding of this school, as depicted by the editor of
the _Osteopathic Physician_, furnishes the most disgusting instance. Men
to whom we had clung when the anchor of our faith in Osteopathy seemed
about to drag were held up before us as sneaking, cringing, incompetent
rascals, whose motives in founding the school were commercial in the worst
sense. And how do you suppose Osteopaths out in the field of practice feel
when they receive catalogues from the leading colleges that teach their
system, and these catalogues tell of the superior education the colleges
are equipped to give, and among the pictures of learned members of the
faculty they recognize the faces of old schoolmates, with glasses, pointed
beards and white ties, silk hats maybe, but the same old classmate
of--sometimes not ordinary ability.
I spoke a moment ago of old maids being induced to believe that they would
be made over in the clinics of an Osteopathic college. That was not an
exaggeration. An Osteopathic journal before me says: "If it were generally
known that Osteopathy has a wonderfully rejuvenating effect upon fading
beauty, Osteopathic physicians would be overworked as beauty doctors."
Another journal says: "If the aged could know how many years might be
added to their lives by Osteopathy, they would not hesitate to avail
themselves of treatment."
A leading D. O. discusses consumption as treated Osteopathically, and
closes his discussion with the statement in big letters: "CONSUMPTION CAN
BE CURED."
Another Osteopathic doctor says the curse that was placed upon Mother Eve
in connection with the propagation of the race has been removed by
Osteopathy, and childbirth "positively painless" is a consummated fact.
The old made young! The homely made beautiful! The insane emancipated from
their hell! Consumption cured! Childbirth robbed of its terrors! Asthma
cured by moving a bone! What more in therapeutics is left to be desired? O
grave, where is thy victory?