CHAPTER IX.
THEORY AND PRACTICE OF OSTEOPATHY.
Infallible, Touch-the-Button System that Always Cured—Indefinite Movements and Manipulations—Wealth of Undeveloped Scientific Facts—Osteopaths Taking M.D. Course—The Standpatter and the Drifter—The “Lesionist”—“Bone Setting”—“Inhibiting a Center”—Chiropractics—“Finest Anatomists in the World”—How to Cure Torticollis, Goitre and Enteric Troubles—A Successful Osteopath—Timid Old Maids—Osteopathic Philanthropy.
How desperately those students worked. Many of them were men and women with gray heads, who had found themselves stranded at a time of life when they should have been able to retire on a competency. They had staked their little all on this last venture, and what was before them if they should fail heaven only knew. How eagerly they looked forward to the time when they should have struggled through the lessons in anatomy, chemistry, physiology, symptomatology and all the rest, and should be ready to receive the wonderful principles of Osteopathy they were to apply in performing the miraculous cures that were to make them wealthy and famous. Need I tell the physician who was a conscientious student of anatomy in his school days, that there was disappointment when the time came to enter the class in “theory and practice” of Osteopathy?
There had been vague ideas of a systematized, infallible, touch-the-button system that always cured. Instead, we were instructed in a lot of indefinite movements and manipulations that somehow left us speculating as to just how much of it all was done for effect.
We had heard so often that Osteopathy was a complete satisfying science that did things specifically! Now it began to dawn upon us that there was indeed a “wealth of undeveloped scientific facts” in Osteopathy, as those glittering circulars had said when they thought to attract young men ambitious for original research. They had said, “Much yet remains to be discovered.” Some of us wondered if the “undeveloped” and “undiscovered” scientific facts were not the main constituents of the “science.”
The students expected something exact and tangible, and how eagerly they grasped at anything in the way of bringing quick results in curing the sick.
If Osteopathy is so complete, why did so many students, after they had received everything the learned (?) professors had to impart, procure Juettner’s “Modern Physio-Therapy” and Ling’s “Manual Therapy” and Rosse’s “Cures Without Drugs” and Kellogg’s work on “Hydrotherapy”? They felt that they needed all they could get.
It was customary for the students to begin “treating” after they had been in school a few months, and medical men will hardly be surprised to know that they worked with more faith in their healing powers and performed more wonderful (?) cures in their freshman year than they ever did afterward.