CONCLUSION
The correct use of the foregoing table depends entirely upon correct diagnosis. Knowledge of the vertebra to be adjusted for the correction of any disease is useless unless the disease be recognized when met. Diagnosis may be, and usually is, aided by Palpation and Nerve-Tracing, which may be considered as divisions of diagnosis since the subluxation and the tender nerve are evidences (symptoms) of disease. But these two divisions can never wholly take the place of a complete diagnosis which calls to the aid of the examiner every harmless method of ascertaining the patient’s condition. The part may not suffice for the whole.
The Chiropractor has an opportunity to become the best of diagnosticians because he has at his command all the usually taught methods and in addition Palpation and Nerve-Tracing, which are especially useful in differential diagnosis. (See “[Schedule of Examination].”) The profession is at present lamentably weak in diagnosis and as long as they remain so they will fail to achieve the possible maximum of results from the application of a theory which, per se, is applicable to all disease but which is often imperfectly applied in practice.