Finally I had to ask where he adjusted.
"Oh, I adjust when it's really necessary," he said.
"You adjust when it's really necessary?" I asked.
"Sure," he replied, "now let me show you my latest toy."
"Wait," I protested. "When do you think it's necessary and when that happens -- where?"
"Whenever -- you know."
"Okay, but where?" I asked. "I mean, I haven't seen a table anywhere."
"I'll show you," he said as he went to the supply room. He emerged with a folded portable table covered with dust.
"You don't really adjust, do you?" I asked.
"Frankly," he said, "I don't have time for all that. Besides I find I can give my patients more relief with some ultrasound or diathermy than I could ever do with all the adjusting."
"Just about anyone can give someone some relief," I said. "You can put someone dying of cancer on enough drugs to suppress the pain, but it still won't help them recover. You've got to decide if you want to be a symptom doctor or a cause doctor."
"I've heard all that before," he said tersely. "What I do with these therapy machines gives people real relief; it doesn't take up much of my personal time, saves energy, and insurance pays for it."
"What a pity," I said shaking my head, "you used to be one of the finest adjustors around."
He smiled. "I can still give a good adjustment."
With that I challenged him to give me a low back adjustment. With an anomalous L5, other DCs have usually found it difficult to mobilize anything but their wasted energy.
Opening up the portable table and dusting it off, my friend proceeded to give me one of the best head to toe adjustments I had had in months. It was an overwhelming experience. Not just because it was a good adjustment, but because of the sorrow I felt that a gift such as his had been thrown away on the scrap heap of time and trouble. The years of study and the god-given gift of dexterity had been sacrificed because of greed and energy.
"How can you throw away the gift you have in your hands?" I asked incredulously. He just smiled as he folded the table up and took it back into the supply room.
"Now let me show you this little beauty over here."
On the way home from his office I couldn't stop thinking of the movie "Amadeus." In it we find a prodigy of rare gifts in the young Mozart. The gifts are accepted as casually as the act of breathing. Another goes literally insane from the frustration of mediocrity. This may not seem as dramatic, but there are many who would have loved to have adjusted with half the ability of my mechanical colleague. Yet, with all the seminars and practice -- they just don't have the hands, the feeling, or the timing to make a good adjustment. While not openly admitting it, I'm sure there are thousands of eager but ungifted DCs in the field who would give almost anything to be able to adjust well.
To me there are few things more beautiful or graceful than watching a skilled adjustor demonstrate his art. The quickness, confidence and the poise match a beautiful ballet, only this one also brings health at his fingertips.
The tragedy is that the frustration of mediocrity often leads some into the wonderland of machines. The result is that we now are treated to ads loaded with endorsements from athletes about some wonderful new machine used by some chiropractors, as if it were an endorsement for chiropractic itself. It's not. Chiropractic is the mobilization of fixations, whether by hand or instrument, not its electrification or boiling or drugging.
Unlike the belief of some of my "fans," I love and believe in adjusting. If they said I could do only one thing in practice it would be to adjust, to adjust, and to adjust. This doesn't mean that I don't just as strongly believe that there are many wonderful synergists to the adjustment. After all, few things dissolve most calcium deposits better than galvanism. And few things work better with the adjustments than homeopathic remedies. So, why deny the patient all the natural forms of therapy that might help them? Why condemn them to legalized knifings and drug orgies because it doesn't fit into some nutty exercise in philosophical moronity?
Yet with it all -- I can't conceive of the office of a chiropractic physician without an adjusting table as its centerpiece. Only a few of us may have the talent to be soloists in the chiropractic symphony, but we can all play beautiful and healthful "music" in its orchestra.