In a previous article (SOTO Australasia’s Expression summer 20081 we commented on our observation that the work of DeJarnette termed Bloodless Surgery and later renamed Chiropractic Manipulative Reflex Technique is the least utilized of the three main areas of SOT procedure, those being categories, CMRT and cranials. In the occipital fibre analysis article2 we quoted DeJarnette’s viewpoint on the importance of the “organ work” to the chiropractic profession and we are reminded of a publication of the 1950s, by BJ Palmer, entitled “Shall Chiropractic Survive”.3 The point BJ and DeJ were making was that chiropractic may not survive. We figure BJ was warning chiropractors of the danger of allopathic methods and that DeJ was warning of chiropractic becoming a back and neck pain speciality.

From the 1950s, and BJ’s predictions, to the 1970s to now – what has changed? Well some big things have happened along the way, one of which was a conference way back in 19754 in which the term “spinal manipulative therapy” (SMT) was coined to describe what the “medical manipulator” had in common with osteopaths and chiropractors. Thus, when a medical practitioner was “moving bones”, it was termed MMT, an osteopath used OMT and a Chiropractor CMT (physiotherapists were, for some reason, not included in this conference and so in this framework missed out on getting “PMT” as their acronym).

For eighty years, up to the time of this conference, chiropractors had worked hard to define their uniqueness and had used terms such as “adjustment”, and “analysis” in place of “treatment” and “diagnosis” so as to define chiropractors’ unique objective and here was a conference tagging on the words “manipulative” and “therapy”; oh dear! The term SMT doesn’t sit comfortably with many yet the same could be said about DeJarnette’s introduction in the 1960s of the term Chiropractic Manipulative Reflex Technique. Well, it is obvious DeJarnette wasn’t a Palmer graduate and was not of the vertebral subluxation only persuasion, yet he shared with BJ, the vision of chiropractic helping humanity. In fact, there are two fields of application that DeJarnette utilized that BJ (and earlier even, D.D.) would never which were physiotherapeutics and nutrition.

In this paper, we will outline the Palmer philosophy, the DeJarnette philosophy and the middle ground, the field practices of SOT in Australasia. For those who know their history and philosophy take this next section as a review. We are painfully aware that not too much time is allocated to these subjects in the modern university chiropractic courses. For those who fall into this group, perhaps the more recent graduates, we hope this next section is enlightening for you.

The Palmer Philosophy

We could have termed this section, the Palmers (plural) philosophy so as to point out some differences between DD and BJ in thought and in practice. Anyway, here goes! Once upon a time, there was a magnetic healer named Dan Palmer who had a deaf janitor. He found a lump (on the janitor of his building,) Harvey Lillard’s spine, pushed on it and some days later, Harvey’s hearing was restored. The next person he tried the thrust on was a patient with a heart condition and this person responded favourably. He said to himself, “This is good, ring up the deaf society and the heart foundation, and send them all over to me!” He had a friend, the Reverend Sam Weed who said, “Call it: Chiropractic.” Dan was guarded about his method and didn’t want anyone to steal what he was doing and so he had patients lie face down and removed the mirrors from the walls of his rooms.

Dan’s son, Bart, said, “Dad, ‘lighten up.’ What you are doing is a great thing for humanity; you should teach it to others (including me).” From the start of Dan being a teacher, those students changed it and started to add other things like osteopathy and massage and electrical procedures. Three early students got together and wrote the first textbook of Chiropractic5, beating Dan and his son who retaliated and wrote their own book. Dan thought this first 1906 book and the second one written by his son (mostly) were a bit “off centre” so he wrote a big volume in 1910 6. The principles of chiropractic including innate intelligence, universal intelligence, and the beginnings of the idea of chiropractic being unique in its objective were propounded in this volume. Unfortunately, many pages of the 1910 book, written by Dan, were dedicated to the criticism of his son, Bart. Dan passed away and Bart didn’t continue printing this 1910 volume. In fact, it did not come back into circulation, for obvious reasons, until after Bart’s death. 7 Meanwhile Bart developed the principles of chiropractic, included a lot of metaphysics, and wrote over a 50 year period. The most influential writing of this time was the 33 principles by “Stevie”, R.W. Stephenson8, which he stated was a collection of the principles he heard whilst attending BJ’s lectures at the PSC. The uniqueness and separateness of the profession was its saving grace, and we reckon this is the fun bit you don’t hear much about in chiropractic history class – the 1907 trial.

The first book of two volumes titled “Modernized Chiropractic” was written by Sol Langworthy, Minora Paxson and Oakley Smith. These dissenters, headed by Langworthy, were a bit cheeky in failing to even mention DD Palmer (or BJ), crediting instead the “bohemian thrust” tradition. Yet they were the first to use the term “subluxation” in chiropractic; the first to refer to the intervertebral foramina; the first to refer to the erect posture in man; gave the first reference to the laws of gravity affecting the stature of the human being; and the first reference to the 9. supremacy of the nerves’ as opposed to the osteopathic claim concerning the “supremacy of blood.”

To fill you in with the timeline of the story, DD Palmer (Dan) had sold the chiropractic school he had started to his son Bart and travelled to California. The year is 1907, a PSC graduate named Shegatano Marikubo is arrested in Wisconsin charged with practicing medicine, surgery and osteopathy without a license. Marikubo turned to BJ for help. BJ hired the lawyer, Thomas Morris of Wisconsin law firm Morris and Hartwell. Morris realised the significant legal advantage in using Langworthy and Co.’s book, with the concept about the supremacy of nerves being the most important piece of the defence. William Rehm writes10.

“In Langworthy, Tom Morris had discovered gold. ‘Modernized Chiropractic” had defined the difference between chiropractic and osteopathy in terms of both philosophy and technique. Because of Langworthy, Morris could present evidence that the brain and spinal cord were the source of the ‘unseen power’ in the body, not the blood, as the osteopath and medical doctor preached. In this book, Langworthy and Co. exhaustively and convincingly demonstrated spinal mechanics, the foramina, the interconnections of the autonomic nervous system, and the possible aberrations of the health and well-being of the human body. Just as convincingly, it demonstrated the effects of the ‘chiropractic thrust’ as opposed to other spinal techniques…”

Morris asked the court to amend the charge to “practicing osteopathy without a license” since the defendant was only using manipulation. Not suspecting a trap, the prosecution agreed. By this manoeuvre, Morris then showed that osteopathy and chiropractic were not the same thing, as the state contended and, therefore, his client could not be prevented from practising. The jury rendered a unanimous acquittal. The rest as they say is history. BJ insisted on new terminology to maximize chiropractic’s difference from medicine and osteopathy. Instead of diagnosis, chiropractors made an analysis. Instead of a treatment, chiropractors made an adjustment. The word “manipulation” wasn’t used. BJ suggested that chiropractic be exclusively the correction of vertebral subluxation which was the cause of dis-ease (dis-ease as opposed to disease). Let’s contrast the DD and BJ – Langworthy influenced – Chiropractic with DeJarnette’s experience.

The DeJarnette Philosophy

DeJarnette didn’t go the Palmer School of Chiropractic but to Lincoln College in Nebraska. Did his college have a vertebral subluxation correction basis? Yes; DeJarnette tells us this in his 1958 history text 11. He also tells us about the experience with his classmate who had heart problems, which extended his clinical inquiries and methods beyond the vertebral level. De Jarnette was an adventurer, combing spinal distortions, visceral and cranial procedures and an inquiring mind into the intelligent design of human physiology. He has stated that Dr Willard Carver had more of an influence on his early studies than the Palmers. It is evident in reading De Jarnette as we have done over the years that he did not see the need to differentiate between the terms diagnosis and analysis. A question that we have is: did De Jarnette make reference to innate in his writings? Perhaps a future article is needed for this one.

The Australian Experience

In recent “Expressions” we have had the pleasure of reading about Drs Scott Parker12. and Keith Bastian’s 13. 1960s and 1970s experiences at Palmer College with SOT and we would like to add our observations of the early 1980s local scene up to the present. When we graduated, Australian and New Zealand chiropractors attended, in the main, the three colleges Palmer, Sydney and Phillip. It is the same today apart from the name changes (Palmer University, Macquarie, RMIT). Although many differences, a common ground was that these three did not have a focus on physiotherapeutics or nutrition. Palmer philosophy having an influence? Perhaps another take on the difference between US and Australasian chiropractors is that in our region there are numerous therapists, nutritionists and naturopaths, who deal with nutrition (In the US, naturopathy is a very small affair) and with the physiotherapy component, in Australia and New Zealand you never get paid for its use as a chiropractor. Whatever the case, physiotherapy usage by chiropractors is rare; nutrition seems to be “general patient management level.” By this we mean, we do not have too many Australasian chiropractors doing chelation therapy and we do not know of any chiropractors who use glandulars as per Dr. Rees.

Glandulars

A good general description of the use of concentrates of raw animal glands to promote health is presented by the US Vet, Martin Goldstein. 14. He writes: “The concept of glandulars was promising enough at the start of the twentieth century for numerous medical studies to be done about them. The idea behind them was almost embarrassingly simple: that ‘like cells helps like.’ The diseased cells of a human liver, that is, might be boosted by the administration of liver cells from another host. Moreover, the cells need not be species-specific, only organ-specific, which was to say they could come from the liver of a cow or pig.”

The first great success for “organotherapy” as it came to be called, was with the thyroid. In 1912, animal thyroid cells were injected into children suffering from cretinism and myxoedema (bloating of the body), conditions caused by an under- functioning thyroid; the glandulars brought dramatic improvements. Over the next several years, other successes were reported.

How animal glandulars worked in the human body remained a mystery, however. Frustrated, researchers began searching for the distinct element that might be the key. In 1922, Frederick Banting and his graduate student Charles Best began focusing on the pancreas. They knew the pancreas was somehow involved in dispatching blood sugar as energy for the body. They knew that when too much sugar built up in the blood, it meant that the pancreas wasn’t doing its job, and that for the patient, diabetes would follow. They also knew that extracts of animal pancreas taken orally seemed to help. But how? Eventually, they succeeded in isolating insulin from the pancreas of a sheep. They won a Nobel Prize for their work, and when therapeutic insulin followed a lot of diabetics were able to live longer and more comfortably as a result. Still, the breakthrough steered science decisively away from the use of glandulars as they appear in nature – a decided loss, because a whole pancreas contains various other substances called “intrinsic factors” which are discarded in the process of extracting insulin, and these factors are integral to the proper overall functioning of the pancreas. In retrospect, that may have constituted as much of a wrong turn as the one that led to vaccines.

One of the few contrarians who resisted the trend was Dr. Royal Lee, the father of glandulars as they are used by modern practitioners (and these were the glandulars used by Dr. Rees). Lee was the founder of Standard Process labs, a large nutraceutical supplier in Palmyra, Wisconsin. In the 1940s, Lee theorized that most organ failures are so-called autoimmune diseases, in which the immune system mistakenly attacks its own host’s organs. Why would the immune system do that? Perhaps, Lee theorized, the organ begins to deteriorate naturally, from malnutrition. When it does, it sloughs off nucleoproteins – Lee’s term was “protomorphogen”, derived from the Greek and meaning “primary cell organizer” – that the immune system targets for destruction as useless waste material. But the nucleoproteins were “marked” genetically as being part of the organ from which they’ve broken off. Sometimes, as a result, Lee theorized, the immune system turns to attacking the organ itself.

Borrowing from organotherapy, Lee developed a concentrated extract of bovine nucleoproteins that could be taken up by the body as a sort of “decoy” target – or, in effect, an antigen of very similar proteins, one which could distract the immune system from the diseased organ, absorb its firepower, and give the organ time to heal. The more the organ healed, the fewer nucleoproteins it cast off, suggested Lee, and therefore the less the immune system targeted it. With enough glandular decoy action, the organ would regain its metabolic balance, the immune system would leave it entirely alone – and full health restored. When his findings were published in a medical journal in 1946, Lee was condemned as a crackpot and his theories were left to languish, though in the 1950s, Watson and Crick relied on his work to help them define the structure of DNA. These nucleoproteins contained the genetic markers that were the cornerstone of their research. Glandulars are still available from the Standard Process Labs, the family having continued this company. The D1 glandulars used and promoted by Mel Rees include cardio-plus and cardio-trophin. Mel Rees liked them; years earlier DD Palmer didn’t! Here is what DD wrote, in a section called “Organotherapy” in the 1910 book. 15.

Organotherapy (by DD Palmer)

“Organotherapy is the treatment of disease by the internal administration of animal organs or their extracts. In medical books, hundreds of years old, every portion of an animal, bird, snake, fish, insect and of man himself was recommended and used as medicine for diseases. A less variety is in use today, but they are used in a similar manner and for the same purpose. “The thyroid gland, desiccated, or extracts from it, is given for myxoedema, cretinism, skin diseases, obesity, and goitre, etc. “Organotherapy is founded on the notion that the extracts of organs of animals corresponding to the diseased portion of the patient should assist in its recuperation and regeneration. This superstitious ignorance is born of the barbaric notion of the uncivilized, that the eating of the heart of your enemy will make one strong, brave and fearless.”

Conclusion:

We have attempted a brief review of the philosophical beginnings of Chiropractic, including the DeJarnette experience. An introduction of the subject of organotherapy and glandulars was written to enable our readers to understand the method of Bloodless Surgery utilized by Dr. M L Rees, in particular, the D1 reflex covered in the next Expression issue. For those who would like to read a bit more on the subject, we suggest (www.becomehealthynow.com) all about Standard Process (what are glandular products?).

References:

1. SOTO A/Asia Expression summer 2008/9
   
2. SOTO A/Asia Expression winter 2007
   
3. B.J Palmer Shall Chiropractic Survive Davenport Ia 1956
   
4. M Goldstein The research status of spinal manipulative therapy Bethesda , Md, 1975
   
5. S Langworthy, O Smith and M Paxson “ A textbook of modernized chiropractic” Cedar Rapids, Ia (1906)
   
6. D.D Palmer “ The chiropractor’s adjuster: A textbook of the science, art and philosophy of chiropractic . Portland 1910
   
7. Allen Terrett “the genius of DD Palmer” JACA 1614. 150-158
   
8. R W Stephenson Chiropractic Textbook PSC Davenport Ia 1927
   
9. W. Wardwell Chiropractic history and evolution of a new profession Mosby, St Louis Mo 1992
   
10. W. Rehm “ Legally defensible: Chiropractic in the courtroom and after,1907” Ch Hist. 6:51-55 (1986)
    
11. MB De Jarnette “History of SOT’ Nebraska, 1958.
    
12. S. Parker. Letter to the editor SOTO A’Asia Expression summer 2008
    
13. K Bastian Letter to the editor SOTO A’Asia Expression Autumn & Winter 2008
    
14. M. Goldstein ‘ The nature of animal healing”1999
    
15. DD Palmer “ The Chiropractic adjustor. 1910