"QUACKS AND QUACKERY"

Evening Post, Volume CI, Issue 111, 11 May 1921, Page 6

"QUACKS AND QUACKERY"

REPLY TO DR. ELLIOTT.

TO THE EDITOR

. Sir,—Dr. Elliott has raised several controversial points in his letter of 7th May which we had anticipated' discussing with him privately, so in justice to chiropractlo and tho many readers of your paper interested in..this jjorfdspondehco, and also to ourselves, •we -beg-to; bo' allowed space to clear up at least a few' of them. In passing, however, we must express our heartfelt appreciation of the "better fate" which the doctor has so kindly meted out to our " triumvirational lucubration."

In our letter of the 6th inst. we challenged some of the statements Dr. Elliott made in his lecture with regard to ; .tho movability or otherwise of the vertebrae to an extent less than, a dislocation. Now he seems moro concerned with tho resultant • preseure such misplacement would produce on the spinal nerves. He points out that the only way to prove that disease is caused by nerve impingement is by demonstrating; on the dead body that euch pressure exists, and that this would be the regular " scientific" medical method, we are only too willing to admit. Chiropractors, however, do not dabble in dead bodies', for we have a very singular method of proving our statements that, strangely enough, does not require our subject to be either dead or mutilated. We simply take a sick person and adjust the_ vertebrae which palpitation or X-ray findings show to be misplaced. Such persons as a rule get well, unless their bodies have been subjected to serious surgical interference, and the explanation is to be found in tho anatomy and mechanics of the spine, with which Dr. Elliott ought to be thoroughly conversant. Sufficient is it to say that the extreme likelihood of nerve pressure occurring at the intervertebral foramina can bo_ positively demonstrated with two spinal segmente, and the fact that it does occur can only be finally and definitely proved, not by dissection of sick people after they are dead, but by restoring health while they are still living "through Telieving pressure on the nerves at tho point whero they leave the spine, thus eliminating the cause of disease." As tho doctor himself urgeSj "surely this ia a practical art,", and wo are one with him there—surely it is!'. Dr. Elliott ridicules our belief that it requires muoh less force than he himself believes necessary to misplace the vertebrae sufficiently to cause |,nervo impingement. When we think of somo of the really far-fetched medical explanations of the cauae of disease, such ridicule sounds strangely incongruous from a man practising, in that profession. In any case "subluxations" are less than dislocations —they are not even partial dislocations— and the faot that most spines arc- subject to them shows that no great violent force is necessary to produce them. The doctor is labouring under two misapprehensions regarding our offer to move any vertebra in his spine. Firstly, it is not necessary to have eyes in the back of his head to see the movement we speak of, just as it is not necessary to have eyes in his feet in order to1 know his legs move. When we said "to his own satisfaction," wo presumed nature had endowed him with, a normal lense of foeling. Secondly, we would explain for Dr. Elliott's information that the permanent releasing of pressure from tho spinal nerves in the case of a misplacement of long-standing is not done in a single adjustment any more than a chronic disease would be "cured" by a single dose of Dr. Elliott's medicine. In other words, a single adjustment cannot be recorded radiographically, as Dr. Elliott perhaps thinks, unless it bo a caso of an acute subluxation. Thin point being cleared up, the elaborate arrangements which tho doctor has suggested for radiographing Mr. Otterholt's spino are irrelevant because useless,- and Joed not be discussed further. \

Wo still think Dr. Elliott has been to no trouble to investigate chiropractic. What would bo himself think of a person who claimed to have investigated mediciho by reading some pamphlets on that subject, bo it. ever so patiently. We are gratified by tho interest, tho doctor has pho.vn in our rndiographio collection, and can only roiterate that. Ke may inspect it, and got what other information wo have promised him, including his ■adjustment, at 19, Kensington-street.—Wo remain, still in the interests of chiropractic, ■"' HENRY OTTERHOLT. - ALLAN BRYCE. "■'■ ■ M. W. WRATT. 10th May. '. . . ,