Part 12

This tendency of poisons to increase subluxations already existing has caused many to conclude that _new_ subluxations could be produced by the motor reactions from poison. The laws governing reflex action make this impossible. If a mild stimulus be applied in the segment occupied by a given, and normally aligned, vertebra, the resulting contraction will tend to appear on the same side as the irritation and would--if sufficient to subluxate the vertebra--draw it _toward_ the irritated side. If a stronger stimulus were applied the resulting reaction would appear on _both_ sides and with sufficient intensity on the opposite side to the irritation so that the difference between the contractions on the two sides would never be sufficient to overcome the fixity and inertia of the vertebra. If this bit of theorizing be doubted, let me add that if poisons _could_ cause subluxation they would undoubtedly cause drawing of the vertebra _toward_ the irritated side--which is not the way we find them in poisoning cases. Almost without variation, the subluxation is _away from_ the affected side. Such a subluxation produces most impingement on the side of the irritation; the only kind which could follow poisons would produce its effects on the opposite side.

In acute poisoning cases which may possibly proceed to a rapidly fatal termination, while immediate adjustment may be sufficient to cause the expulsion of the poison and the recovery of the patient it is probably wisest to administer an antidote or to call a physician with a stomach pump. Just so, the pulmotor should be summoned for gas asphyxiation; but at least one case was recently encountered in which an adjustment started the heart and artificial respiration movements restored consciousness before the pulmotor could arrive. There are few, if any, acute poisoning cases in which an adjustment will not aid. Sometimes it should be assisted by other measures not strictly within the province of Chiropractic.

Chronic poisoning, such as lead poisoning from paint work, yields well to adjustments providing the secondary cause, the persistent inhalation of lead fumes, be discontinued.

Poisons may wound or injure the body whether or not it be normal; in such case they might properly be classed with trauma. But no poison causes disease except through the medium of vertebral subluxation previously produced. Some subluxation which has never been sufficient to produce active disease may be so increased by the action of poisons as to be of serious effect even though the poison has long since been eradicated from the body--for the subluxation is permanent until affected by force outside itself. In considering the etiology of any disease the possibility of its being augmented by medicines, drug habits, or dietetic errors should be weighed with other evidence.

EXPOSURE

By this term is especially meant exposure to sudden temperature changes. The body may sustain a very high or a very low outside temperature providing the change is gradual enough so that the heat-regulating mechanism may adapt itself properly to protect the body and maintain an even temperature within. A sudden change from a very warm room to a very cold atmosphere; a quick transportation from cold air to a superheated apartment; or a sudden draft of air whose temperature is sharply at variance with surrounding air and therefore with the condition of the body surface may have a very bad effect.

The skin and mucous membranes of the body have become accustomed to a certain temperature; the change irritates them. And the immediate result is a motor reaction increasing subluxation in the same body segment in which the irritation is greatest and probably producing first an irritation of the nerves at the spine and then an inflammation of the exposed surface. Thus a “cold” is produced. One who has no subluxation affecting the respiratory tract--a rare degree of normality--may escape coryza, bronchitis, or pneumonia, the most common effects, but may suffer a congestion of the stomach walls or of other parts of the body. It is said that the cold “settled on the stomach.” The fact is that the motor reaction takes advantage of the weak parts of the spine and affects them most, like the pernicious habit of spine-stretching which used to prevail among Chiropractors. This explains why “cold in the head” is so very frequent. The fourth Cervical vertebra is situated at the middle point of the neck and is very freely movable and easily subluxated and, in fact, more often displaced than other Cervicals.

Noxious or poisonous vapors may have an effect identical with that of sudden temperature change. Sleeping in an improperly ventilated room often appears to cause “cold.” Careful study of the part of the body exposed to draft, and of spino-organic connection, will show that in most instances the effect of such exposure is first felt in the same body segment.

It is a well-known fact that not all people are “subject to colds.” One may be “subject to lung colds,” another to “cold in the head.” The susceptibility is entirely governed by the condition of the spine, the person having no middle Cervical subluxation being immune from coryza even though subjected to the same exposure which will produce it in others. The pollen of plants produces hay fever in the susceptible in much the same manner that draft produces coryza, both acting as secondary causes.

BODILY EXCESSES

In this division of secondary causes may be mentioned overwork, continuous loss of sleep, overeating, venereal excesses, etc.

They act in this manner. Wasting and overusing the bodily resources they lower the general vitality. Now, though there be subluxations at various points in the spine there is still transmitted through each impinged nerve a certain amount of Vital Force which to a certain extent maintains the functions of the body and keeps it in a state of activity sufficient for ordinary demands. When the entire stock of vitality is lowered through excess the amount of energy passing through each nerve in the body is lessened, but the effect of such lessening is felt most where there is subluxation. At the high tide of vitality the subluxations are not sufficient, perhaps, to produce serious disease. At low ebb, every organ whose nerve is interfered with suffers keenly. Under such conditions the body is much more subject to adverse influences, to shocks and jars, to contagion or infection, to the action of cold or exposure. Thus bodily excess acts as a secondary cause of disease.

ABNORMAL MENTAL STATES

There are many who believe that fear, worry, hate, grief, etc., are in themselves sufficient to produce disease in a normal organism. Shock following the demise of a loved one or some deep disgrace is occasionally alleged as a cause of death or of a rapid decline in health which terminates fatally.

The failure of Suggestive Therapeutics to cure disease except when it is largely imaginary rather argues against this theory. It is also true that proper Chiropractic adjustments not only lead to the cure of disease apparently caused by abnormal mental states but also, restoring proper blood-supply and nutrition to the brain, induce a happier mental state in the patient. Even insanity has been cured in a number of cases by Chiropractic.

We hold that worry, fear, etc., are abnormal; that they arise from the improper expression of Mind through disordered brain-cells. “Diseases of the Mind,” in the strictest sense, cannot occur, but only diseases of the physical medium through which mind is expressed and translated to the physical plane of being--the brain.

A condition of abnormal mental expression or activity, especially worry, fear or anger, probably has a two-fold effect: it rapidly wastes the body energy and, like bodily excess, renders every subluxation more effective; it is possible that it may also really produce auto-toxins, generated by abnormal brain-action and affecting the body metabolism adversely. In this way disease appears through the action of abnormal mental states as secondary causes.

They themselves are the result of subluxation of the first or second, sometimes third, Cervical, impinging the nerves which control the blood-supply to the brain and hence its nutrition. Correction of the subluxation causes them to disappear.

INFLAMMATION

Inflammation is a morbid process characterized by the presence of increased temperature and one or more of the symptoms, pain, redness, and swelling. It is distinguished from fever by being confined locally, while fever is a general functional disturbance showing elevation of temperature, increased katabolism, decreased secretion, etc.

Our clinical experience with fevers leads us to accept Metchnikoff’s conclusion that the essential phenomenon of inflammation is hyperaemia. Upon the hyperaemia depend the swelling, pain, and local increase in heat-production. Hyperaemia in turn depends upon disturbance of the vasomotor nerves either as a direct result of some local subluxation or as an indirect consequence of local irritation.

A newly acquired subluxation produces an acute irritation of the pre-ganglionic axons which connect the spinal nerves with the sympathetic ganglia. If these ganglia send out post-ganglionic axons which are vaso-motor in function, an inflammation may be produced without the intervention of any secondary cause. On the other hand, there may be a subluxation producing weakness of some part; through injury to that part or the introduction of poisons or irritants such as germ infection, sensory end-organs are affected and the motor reaction which follows increases the subluxation; this slight increase produces acute irritation of the nerve and hyperaemia, with its resultant phenomena, follows. Stated briefly, irritants produce inflammation only by acting through the medium of the spine. If the spine be normal these irritants are insufficient to produce morbid process. Local inflammation tends to develop toxins, especially if it be of bacterial origin, which may in turn affect the entire organism--an effect which will be discussed presently. Exception must be made in those traumatic cases in which hyperaemia is essential to the reparatory process, and which are attended by what may be termed a normally increased heat-production. This beneficent and reparatory condition cannot be termed disease or morbid process.

The normal temperature of the body depends upon the balance maintained between heat-production and heat-expenditure. This balance is maintained through a complicated nerve mechanism consisting of various nidi in thalamus, medulla, spinal cord and sympathetic ganglia, and a network of communicating axons of both the cerebro-spinal and sympathetic systems, controlling the amount of blood passing through any given body area at a given time, the secretion of the perspiratory glands, the internal metabolic processes, etc. Most important are the vaso-motor nerves, directly, but not originally, derived from the sympathetic, and governing the size and caliber of all blood-vessels so as to control the amount of blood flowing to and through the surface capillaries on the one hand, or the deep-seated, heat-making organs on the other. More than seventy per cent of the body’s heat expenditure is through the skin by evaporation, radiation, and direct conduction. The major portion of the heat production is in the muscles and the parenchymatous viscera, such as liver, spleen, etc., where metabolism is active.

This mechanism is so delicately adjusted that when the outside temperature is lowered the amount of blood passing to the skin is reflexly lessened while internal heat production is increased and the bodily temperature retained at normal. Conversely, the body perspires freely and the surface is flushed with blood in a high temperature, so that heat production is lessened and its discharge accelerated, again tending to maintain an even and normal temperature.

The nervous mechanism is responsive to many and various forms of stimuli--thermic, emotional, mechanical, physiologic need, toxic. Poisons in circulation may affect the bulbar center and produce general fever. A number of centers in the spinal gray may be stimulated with like result. Or there may be purely local irritation which results in local hyperaemia and inflammation.

It will always be found that the primary cause of any permanent derangement of the mechanism lies in vertebral subluxation impinging some of the nerves and thus throwing the mechanism out of its natural balance and poise. Other forms of disturbance are transient and the very nature of the mechanism makes it normally capable of adjusting itself to thermic, mechanic, or emotional stimuli in a short time. Only the subluxation produces permanent elevation of temperature. When such elevation does occur there are many associated changes, increased katabolism, lessening of secretions, anorexia, sometimes mental changes, such as delirium or coma. Fevers vary according to the part of the nerve mechanism affected and the action of any secondary causes.

Fever due to vertebral subluxation alone without any secondary cause operating is very rare. Ordinarily fevers come about in this way. A subluxation occurs which weakens tissue and permits germ invasion; toxins enter the circulation from the germ action and motor reaction increases the original subluxation and causes local inflammation; germ activity is favored by the increasing degree of abnormality and toxins from rapid tissue destruction are added to those already present. The poison-loaded blood then affects the general centers for heat regulation, blood becomes internally engorged, and a chill (internal fever) followed by general increase of temperature occurs. At this juncture any subluxation previously existing is likely to be increased and to add its quota of harm to the rapidly developing picture.

Our problem is to find the original subluxation which controls the site of the original pathologic change and to correct that. In nearly all cases where this is done, even partially, the body is enabled to care for the remainder of the damage and to throw off the accumulated toxins. It is not uncommon that the temperature falls two degrees in five or ten minutes after a proper adjustment. We expect always to abort or check a fever in twenty-four hours or less.

There are cases in which the temperature drops after adjustment but presently rises again. This indicates the virulence of the autointoxication or that some other area of poison production is operating than the one our first adjustment would control. A correct diagnosis will enable one to give specific adjustment and check practically any fever except a chronic one with much tissue destruction already accomplished; even some of these yield.

The commonest cause of fever is at the fifth or sixth Dorsal vertebra, long known as Center Place, or Fever Center. Here emerge many pre-ganglionic fibres which distribute their impulses through lower neurons in the sympathetic system to the coeliac plexus and thence to the blood-vessels supplying the major portion of the abdominal viscera. Adjustment here causes a sudden contraction of these abdominal vessels and a forcing of the blood to the surface with rapid cooling.

Often, however, this adjustment is followed by a recrudescence which indicates that some other vertebra must be adjusted. Many fevers, such as typhoid, pneumonia, tonsilitis, etc., yield to specific local adjustment without any involvement of the so-called Center Place.

I have said that we expect to check or abort a fever with spinal adjustments. The facts that we do so and that the more rapidly we accomplish the result the more rapid the convalescence and the less likely are complications and sequelae argue loudly against the correctness of any theory which supposes fever to be a beneficial and cleansing process. According to such theory it would be totally wrong and dangerous to abort a fever but wiser to encourage it in taking its course. The exact opposite proves true under Chiropractic. The very fact that fevers _do_ diminish and disappear under proper adjustments is a proof that they are abnormal, since adjustment does not in any case tend to lessen normal processes, but only to restore normality no matter in what way the functions of the body have departed from that condition.

All the clinical evidence gathered by Chiropractors in regard to inflammations and fevers tends to prove the correctness of the theories herein set down. Fever plays a part in so many diseases that it has been considered advisable to consider the subject under a special head.

IN CONCLUSION

The vertebral subluxation is the primary cause of all truly pathological conditions. Through its existence the action of a large number of secondary causes becomes possible. Upon no other hypothesis can we explain the remarkable percentage of cures of all known classes of disease through the specific vertebral adjustment.

THE PROCESS OF CURE

Nature is the only real _curative_ agent. Neither suggestion, manipulation, adjustment, nor any other known method applied by Man for the eradication of disease has in itself any power to heal. No man possesses power to do more than so arouse the vital energies of the patient that the body heals itself.

We contain within our own bodies the possibilities of perfect normality. Unless interfered with by powerful outside force we should continue normal from birth to death and death itself would only occur through the simultaneous wearing out of all the parts of the human mechanism. The Chiropractor, insofar as his work succeeds in its purpose, assists the body by adjusting displaced structure and affording the body a free and unhindered opportunity for the exercise of its own self-healing powers. It may be interesting and instructive to analyze the process of cure and to study the exact effects of vertebral adjustment as we have studied the exact effects of vertebral subluxation.

Cure of Simple Subluxation Disease

An acute subluxation--that is, one resulting entirely from concussion of forces within twenty-four or forty-eight hours prior to the moment of adjustment--rarely produces a condition which could be named as any particular disease. The symptoms are those of “wrenched back,” if any. A single adjustment usually suffices to correct such subluxation just as a single movement might correct a dislocated humerus within the same period, and any symptoms promptly disappear. This is probably the maximum benefit to be derived from adjustment and the best time for its administration, because it leaves the spinal column in an exactly normal condition and no more susceptible to further jars or shocks than before the injury. All disease which might have resulted from that subluxation has been fully prevented.

Older subluxations must be dealt with differently because they present a different condition. Adaptative changes have taken place in the shape of the vertebra itself and of every surrounding tissue as they prepare to make the best of their situation. But a vertebra once displaced has lost its poise and broken or modified the reflex arcs through its nerves so that it becomes more likely to respond to further forces applied, or to muscular contractions within the body, by further change of position. Such changes are always followed by further adaptation of the surrounding parts.

The degree of nerve impingement must change to keep pace with the developing malposition and thus, by gradually successive steps, disease develops in the area of peripheral distribution of the nerves. The nerve is under a thumbscrew gradually tightening.

To adjust such a vertebra many successive movements are required. An apparently full and free movement of a subluxation meets the elastic resistance of the solidly packed tissues and the pull of the modified intervertebral disk--strains at these tissues--and rebounds so as to settle almost, but not quite, in its old abnormal position. The amount gained in a single adjustment can rarely be appreciated by palpation. To the touch it would appear that no change had been made, except occasionally in the Cervical region. But with repeated adjustments the vertebra will be found to have approached its normal position. Sometimes in a few weeks, sometimes in a few months, the gain becomes palpable and then perhaps visible to the eye in thin subjects.

The relief of impingement then is not usually an instantaneous process, but proceeds by gradual steps. Each movement of the vertebra is accompanied by a shock to the nerve against some part of which the bone is pressing, which may produce some disturbance in the diseased organs and may even appear to have aggravated disease for a time. Some pain and soreness around the vertebra may accompany the necessary adaptative changes of shape which readapt the tissues to their proper shape and relation.

As the impingement of the nerve is gradually relieved the disease is gradually modified and finally disappears. As the course of adjustments nears its conclusion and the impingement has been reduced to a comparatively slight one there may appear a stage of irritation of the nerve which is a reduplication of the first steps which appeared in the development of the disease. As most subluxations appear not all at once but by a series of changes, so disease develops synchronously, passing from stage to stage with the changes in the impingement. Often it passes through first an acute and active stage due to irritation and then a chronic and comparatively passive stage due to heavier, inhibiting impingement.

Under adjustment these successive stages tend to reappear in reverse order, the most alarming sometimes appearing last and just before the cure is completed. It must be remembered that from the moment one practitioner administers medicine or other remedy and the other adjusts a vertebra, the clinical courses differ widely. No text-book on medical practice has as yet described the clinical course of the various diseases under Chiropractic adjustment.

In chronic diseases where the nerves are paralyzed there may be a period under adjustment during which no change is apparent. This is followed by a period of rapid gain leading to complete recovery. This may be accounted for by the fact that the nerves are degenerated and must be repaired all along their course before communication is reestablished between nerve centers and peripheral organs. When this repair is sufficiently completed to allow communication, the cure is really well advanced, although evidence of it then first appears. This has been noted especially in locomotor ataxia.

Cure of a Germ Disease

First, under adjustment, the acute or acutely increased impingement is relieved. The caliber of the blood-vessels is at once regulated and the destructive action of fever checked. At the same time the vitality of the local tissue in which the germs are active is suddenly increased and there ensues a struggle between the body, as represented by its phagocytes and auto-protective chemicals, and the germs, which if adjustments be continued results in the rapid destruction of the germ colony. Also the elimination of the toxins already in the body proceeds so rapidly that if the fever can be held in check it takes only a short time for the body completely to overcome and eradicate the germs.

Cure of Mental Disease