Healing potions were aplenty.
Medicine men traveled the country,
Professional training, very scanty.
Allopaths, health care they did rule,
Practiced surgery with barber's tools.
Diploma mills were their schools,
Patient care, frightening and cruel.
In 1910 Abraham Flexner did appear,
Educational standards he made clear.
Diploma mills did soon disappear.
Medical education became premier.
A few homeopaths were still around,
Miniscule doses helped patients rebound.
A profession of international renown,
Penchant for mysticism brought them down.
Osteopathy from doctor Andrew Still,
On the rise from old Kirksville.
"Germs in the air don't make us ill,
Problem is, our blood's too still."
Then from the city of Davenport,
Merchant D.D. Palmer did report.
A subluxation of spinal support,
Did cause all our "dis-comforts."
It was to be in years to come,
Explained by B.J., his son.
The presence of "subluxation,"
Disturbs our equilibrium.
For 100 years a game's been played,
The patient's health was center-staged.
Millions in research the feds have payed,
Still no answer for why we've aged.
Yes, live longer that we do,
Genetic engineering can make us two.
Still once each year we get the flu,
Aches and pains still make us blue.
Pills and potions are aplenty,
At the end of the twentieth century.
Specialists galore in every country,
Teaching to increase their bounty.
But on the horizon something new,
As the twentieth century bids us adieu.
Complimentary therapies once eschewed,
Adopted, increases the balance due.
Crystals, magnets or flushing the colon,
Maybe we need pure bee pollen.
Your arm muscles, doctor keeps pullin',
Why is it your arches are fallin'?
It doesn't matter who patients see,
Doctors, dentists, nurses or DCs.
Each well-trained in their specialties,
All will say, "Take more Vitamin C."
Professional education sophisticated,
Each branch overly truncated.
New graduates heavily educated,
Patient care, by a clerk is dictated.
Oh me, Oh my! What's a patient to do?
Whose in charge of this health care milieu?
My doctor, no way, his office's a zoo,
Let's blame Hillary or adjuster, Mary Lou.
As we see the next century dawn,
All hustling, the scramble is on.
Mighty universities study chi-gong,
Managed care paying for "hands-on."
Where we goin', what's the future hold?
Dust in noses, magnets in each skin fold.
Nude body massages so bold, so cold,
All to keep us from growing old.
There's a dilemma, the problem clear,
Who's potions do we revere?
Which specialist is sincere,
What'cha willing to pay my dear?
Where the professions from century begin?
Osteopathy and medicine blended in.
Herbs and homeopathy are resurgein',
Mainstream, alternative, does chiropractic fit in?
Straight and pure some zealots do clamor,
Back to B.J. and his philosophical bantor.
Only the atlas must we re-center,
Was that before or after "neurocalometer"?
Chiropractic is as physicians do,
Was the cry from North Ashland Avenue.
Education dictates what the patient is due,
Don't accept any philosophical guru.
Through the century chiropractic warred on,
Battle lines were indistinctly drawn.
Philosophically pure, mixers be gone,
The real separation was politically spawned.
But who is pure, who is clean,
Who by hands adjusts, I mean?
Besides the physical therapy regimes,
Many adjust using guns and machines.
To DCs, Innate is our shield,
While others talk of an energy field.
Alternative therapies have many a guild,
A vitalistic center their philosophies yield.
The twenty-first century we've acquired,
A new paradigm for health is desired.
Medicine is here when disease care's required.
But wellness and health is now aspired.
So, what will it take to reach our goal?
No smoking, no fat, get rid of that roll.
More exercise, T.V. off! You couch potato,
Health's in your hands, not your HMO.
But who will teach our future doctors,
About health and wellness and natural factors?
The citadels filled with technological actors,
Or industry's pharmaceutical manufacturers?
What of chiropractic institutions,
Health and wellness our foundation.
Why let medicine set the direction?
We've focused right our education.
But health and wellness is a big field,
Functional disturbances must be healed.
New applications research will yield,
Light and truth continuously revealed.
Why limit chiropractic education,
To reduction of the subluxation?
To our vitalistic roots pay oblation,
While embracing an alternative profession.
Let chiropractic in this century be,
In front of health care's hierarchy.
This paradigm-shifting strategy,
Should be chiropractic's monopoly.
What a future we could create,
If only we would tolerate,
Points of view that separate,
Your thoughts and mine about Innate.
Click here for previous articles by Reed Phillips, DC, PhD.