The vast majority of the millions of people who consult a chiropractor each year do so because of chronic back or neck pain. Surveys of people using chiropractic show high levels of satisfaction, and a growing number of scientific studies have provided proof of the therapy’s effectiveness in such cases.
Like osteopathy, chiropractic came out of the American Midwest in the 19th century and was largely the result of dissatisfaction with the conventional medical care of the day. Both therapies involve manipulation of the skeletal system, especially the spine.
However, of the two therapies, chiropractic has been viewed as the most controversial by the medical establishment for most of its history. A major reason for this is that, in the US at least, osteopaths, unlike chiropractors, are also medically trained doctors.
The term “chiropractic” derives from the ancient Greek for “manually effective”. The therapy was founded in 1895 by a self-educated Canadian healer named Daniel David Palmer. Palmer, who moved to and practiced in Iowa, established chiropractic on two basic principles: that spinal misalignment, which puts pressure on nearby nerves, is the cause of virtually all disease; and that spinal manipulation is the cure.
Palmer believed that by manipulating the spine to correct the problem it was possible to cure not only conditions such as sciatica but also a range of internal complaints such digestive disorders and even asthma. The subject of Palmer’s first chiropractic manipulation was Harvey Lillard, the janitor of the building in which Palmer had his office. Lillard, who was deaf, was suffering a bout of severe back pain. Palmer manipulated his spine and Lillard’s pain was cured – and so was his deafness. At first Palmer thought he had accidentally discovered a cure for deafness but although chiropractic proved effective for all sorts of back and neck pain, Palmer never managed to cure another case of deafness.
Word about the new therapy spread rapidly, and by the turn of the century chiropractic had gained a considerable following. It was, however, viewed as controversial from the start, and hundreds of early practitioners were arrested for practicing medicine without a license. Palmer himself was jailed for a time in 1906 and the American medical establishment vociferously opposed the new therapy.
Although chiropractic had many proponents, suspicion and hostility continued throughout the 20th century. Matters finally came to a head as recently as 1990 when the United States Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that the American Medical Association was guilty of anti-trust law violations by engaging in a conspiracy to “contain and eliminate” chiropractic.
Today, chiropractic is the third largest independent health profession in the Western world after conventional medicine and dentistry. However, unlike osteopathy, physically chiropractic has stayed close to its roots and 52,000 of the world’s 56,000 chiropractors practicum in North America.
Most modern chiropractors would now find Palmer’s original philosophy of “one cause – one cure” too simplistic, but spinal manipulation does remain the cornerstone of the therapy. In fact, the emphasis placed on spinal manipulation by many chiropractors is probably the reason for the widespread belief that the therapy is only really useful for treating back pain. In practice, however, chiropractors treat almost any mechanical problem anywhere in the body.
Chiropractic is a holistic discipline and shares many of the fundamental principles of natural healing that underpin all complementary therapies. In particular, the natural principles of chiropractic are that:
• All human beings share a natural healing potential or inner wisdom of the body
• The is the aim of the healing arts is to assist this potential
• The use of medical drugs to suppress symptoms can damage the body’s ability to heal itself.
Chiropractors believe that overall health depends on the normal functioning of the nervous system – that pain and disease in any area of the body are the result of a malfunction of the nerves supplying that particular area. According to this theory, structural problems in and around the spine are the most common reason for such a malfunction.
In simple terms, if a nerve becomes compressed, by a misaligned facet joint for example, the flow of nerve impulses is disrupted, in much the same way as stepping on a hosepipe blocks the flow of water. This in turn leads to dysfunction in the organ or body system that the nerve supplies. As well as causing nerve disruption, such structural problems can also have local mechanical effects as the resulting imbalance in the spine places nearby structures under strain, leading to muscle spasm and pain. They may also have more distant effects. A structural problem in the lower back, for example, may place excess strain on one or both knees, and in such cases, knee problems rather than back pain are often the complaint that causes the sufferer to make an appointment to see the chiropractor.
