Quacks and grafters / by Ex-osteopath; being an exposé of the state of therapeutics at the present time, with some reasons why such grafters flourish, and suggestions to remedy the deplorable muddle.

Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Quacks and grafters / by Ex-osteopath; being an exposé of the state of therapeutics at the present time, with some reasons why such grafters flourish, and suggestions to remedy the deplorable muddle. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    physical exertion, and at the same time preserve the look of serious gravity and professional importance of a quack medical doctor giving particular directions for the dosing of the placebo he is leaving, he might manage to make a sound vertebra pop. This, with his big show of doing something, has its effect on the patient's mind anyway. We were taught that Osteopathy was applied com- mon sense, that it was all reasonable and rational, and simply meant finding something wrong and put- ting it right. Some of us thought it only fair to tell our patients what we were trying to do, and what we did it for. There is where we made our big mis- take. To say we were relaxing muscles, or trying to lift and tone up a rickety chest wall, or straighten a warped spine, was altogether too simple. It was like telling a man that you were going to give him a dose of oil for the bellyache when he wanted an ope- ration for appendicitis. It was too common, and some would go to an Osteopath who could find verte- bra and ribs and hips displaced, something that would make the community sit up and take notice. If one has to be sick, why not have something worth while ? Where Osteopathy has always been so adminis- tered that people have the idea that it means to find things out of place and put them back, it is a gentle- man's job, professional, scientific and genteel. Men have been known to give twenty to forty treatments a day at two dollars per treatment. In many communi- ties, however, the adjustment idea has so degenerated [US]