Anton Lavoissier was guillotined for expounding the discovery of bacterial fermentation. One hundred years later Pasteur made the same discovery and was admitted into the Hall of Fame. Alexander Fleming, discoverer of penicillin, was laughed out of the auditorium when presenting his findings. The greatest of all physicians, the man from Galilee (sic), was given a very bad time.
It is difficult to understand why the force of good is opposed so strongly. One would like to believe that chiropractic benefits, once demonstrated, would be accepted with open arms. Not that we expect adulation and honors, but is it too much to ask for a little respect? The force that drives chiropractors to help and care for people is the force of life. As Cyrano de Bergerac proclaimed in the death scene of the famous play when speaking of his ancient enemies: "I fight on! I fight on! I fight on! Yes, all my laurels you have riven away and all my roses; yet in spite of you, there is one crown I bear away with me, and tonight when I enter before God, my salute shall sweep all the stars away from the blue threshold. One thing without stain, unspotted from the world, in spite of doom, mine own -- and that is....my white plume." Cyrano was referring to his individuality as he did in an earlier passage where he said: "To fight or write but never to make a line I have not heard in my own heart. To travel any road under the sun, under the stars, nor care if fame or fortune lie beyond the borne. Yet with all modesty to say -- my soul be satisfied with flowers, with weeds, with thorns even, but gather them in the one garden you may call your own. In a word, I am too proud to be a parasite and if my nature lacks the germ that grows towering to heaven like the mountain pine, I stand not high it may be but alone."
The founding fathers of chiropractic, along with other pioneers, are easily identified. They are the ones with arrows in their backs. We don't seem to know better so we fight on, but sometimes we roll over and play dead. Everybody needs a little rest. Condemnation before investigation is the first law of ignorance. I believe Spencer said that, or something very close.
On the other hand, there is another principle we may want to consider. "He who does not learn from the mistakes of history is doomed to repeat them." When we don't listen to messages from a higher intelligence, innate or whatever you want to call it, we continue having the same unhappy result. I see chiropractors at a cross-road where we are confronted with a decision vital to our future niche in the world. A "standard of chiropractic care" defining a mainstream chiropractic profession. One-half trillion dollars is the present cost of health care, but it isn't health care at all -- it is disease care.
Allopathic medicine is trained to recognize, describe and analyze perhaps 100,000 disease manifestations and it has equipped itself with every sort of hospital clinic or facility imaginable, along with incredible technology for diagnosis and treatment of these diseases, from the womb to the tomb. What has chiropractic invested in this arena where the treatment of life threatening diseases and injuries are available to most people? Where do we fit? Where are we needed? Does our responsibility begin and end in cracking a joint? I am not being snide. I am serious. If it does, then we need to vote and decide. I know an ENT (ear,nose and throat) doctor who specialized in one nostril.
In my 40 years of chiropractic practice, I have arrived at my opinion of what work a chiropractor is on this earth to perform. A chiropractor is here to study all the scientific evidence and conduct appropriate research in the field of whole health care. homo sapien is a being built upon a foundation of four pillars: body mechanics, body chemistry, mental process, and spirituality. All of these, when integrated and functioning in homeostasis, make a healthy, happy being. If this is a chiropractic standard of care, let's vote on it and go for it. Ask not why. Ask, why not?