Technic and Practice of Chiropractic

by Joy Maxwell Loban

GERM DISEASES

These comprise a large portion of the febrile affections. Most germ diseases are characterized by fever and the presence of circulating toxins with resulting disturbance of the metabolic processes of the body.

It is generally agreed among pathologists that the greater number of varieties of micro-organisms found at times in man are not pathogenic. Some aid in the decomposition of food in the alimentary canal; others have various beneficial functions to perform. But some, under proper conditions, feed upon and destroy living tissue. These are the so-called pathogenic germs.

The pathogenic germs are many. They enter the body by various routes, in the air we breathe, the food we eat, the water we drink; sometimes they are communicated by direct contact with other persons or with objects infected with them. The term “contagious” is applied to those diseases whose germs may be carried through the air from one to another; “infectious” refers to those communicable only by contact.

In every healthy individual are found multitudes of germs of both the pathogenic and harmless varieties. We are constantly exposed to the influence of the former yet by no means all bodies into which pathogenic germs find entrance contract disease. This fact has caused much study and among pathologists and bacteriologists generally the conclusion has been reached that the development of colonies of micro-organisms sufficiently to produce disease depends upon what is known as “susceptibility” of the organism. There must be a latent weakness of which the micro-organisms take advantage.

This amounts to the admission that the body contains the inherent property of successfully resisting all germ action. Indeed, the fundamental proposition of Serum-Therapy is that under stress of the presence of dilute germ infusions the body does develop special chemicals which neutralize the germ poisons and kill the germs and which remain after the inoculation to guard against any further entrance of germs of the same kind and vulnerable to the same protective chemicals.

This theory is sufficiently correct to have served as an unassailable basis for a most illogical procedure. The truth is that the auto-protective power of the body must be lower than normal and the germs must find a weakened area for development and multiplication before they can develop sufficiently to produce disease. Once they gain a foothold they tend to multiply with great rapidity and to develop alarming symptoms often leading to death.

Only in a few instances does modern science believe that a pathogenic germ can successfully attack a healthy body, but is claimed that there are a few germs, such as the Klebs-Loeffler bacillus (diphtheria producer) and the bacillus of anthrax, which may find lodgment in any organism, healthy or unhealthy, to produce disease.

Now, the susceptibility of the body to germ invasion requires explanation. Merely to say that one is susceptible and another is not leaves too wide a field of possibility for error. It is easy to reason from the fact that all persons are at some time exposed to contagious or infectious diseases while comparatively few contract them that some persons are vulnerable to certain diseases while others are not. It is plain that while a person may be susceptible to typhoid fever because he has a weakness in the intestines, he may be quite immune from pneumonia or tuberculosis or any other infectious or contagious disease. But why this difference? Let us look at the problem from another angle.

Chiropractors find with every contagious or infectious disease certain subluxations whose location with relation to the disease is constant and demonstrable. Thus all cases of pulmonary tuberculosis show a third Dorsal subluxation with only enough exceptions to prove the rule; tonsilitis is invariably accompanied by subluxation of the second, third or fourth Cervical. Correction of the subluxation is, in all except the most fully and virulently developed cases, followed by a radical cure. Indeed, in many of the germ diseases it is possible to abort the fever with improvement of all symptoms in from five minutes to twelve hours. We are so accustomed to checking germ diseases at once that failure to do so leads us to immediate investigation of our palpation and adjustment to discover some technical error in the application of the principles of Chiropractic to the case in question.

It is manifestly impossible by vertebral adjustment to raise the body beyond normal power. Nothing is added to the body; no energy is utilized other than the energy of the body itself which is provided by Nature and released through restoration of the normal carrying capacity of nerves. The highest goal attainable is normality, and it is observed that no matter whether the impingement be in the nature of an excitation or an inhibition of nerve action the effect of a correct adjustment is always in that direction—toward normality. It may be as well to digress here long enough to remark that abnormal change is never the result of adjustment but always of maladjustment, and those who claim to be able to produce stimulation by moving a given vertebra one way and inhibition by moving it another are entirely wrong.

It is evident from the results of adjustment in germ disease that the normal body is entirely capable of throwing off the poisons and exterminating the germs, which conclusion quite agrees with science. The fact, not known by other branches of science, and asserted by Chiropractic is simply that the subluxation is the factor which determines susceptibility.

Upon ascertaining that a certain vertebra is in normal alignment we may say with absolute certainty that the organs innervated by the nerves passing through its foramina are not and cannot be the site of any pernicious germ activities. To go further, it has been demonstrated in a number of cases that the subluxation existed before the contagion or infection developed. A man has been known to have a second Lumbar subluxation for many years without effects other than a tendency to constipation and on the appearance of a typhoid epidemic to contract the disease. Correction of the subluxation afforded a cure. Such instances might be cited in great numbers. No person without the necessary subluxation ever contracts a germ disease and the necessary subluxation can be exactly located for the vast majority of such diseases. Unfortunately it is impossible to find a person who has not some subluxations and is not, therefore, subject to some form of contagion or infection.

So far Chiropractic agrees with general knowledge of germ disease and its etiology, simply adding the explanation of susceptibility which all other modes of investigation have failed to afford. In one particular we find apparent disagreement.

We have said that several bacilli are supposed to have power to cause disease in healthy bodies. Diphtheria is a disease caused by one of these. Yet Chiropractic adjustments have rapidly aborted diphtheria, apparently proving that the body has power to react strongly enough to conquer even this germ, providing the nerve channels be opened to allow of exertion of its full activity. It is probable that all diseases fall under the same law and that no germ can find lodgment in healthy tissue. Chiropractic affirms this as a truth and as yet no experience has tended to disprove it; the belief is strengthened by the years.

The experiments which are said to have proven that certain micro-organisms can attack healthy tissue are based upon the supposition that careful examination demonstrated the absence of disease in the animals experimented upon by inoculation. Since these experiments and these examinations were made without any knowledge of vertebral subluxations, and consequently without discovering whether or not there existed latent weaknesses of various organs, we doubt the validity of the experiments. Our own examination of human and animal spines has thus far failed to discover any perfectly normal specimens.

Our clinical experience with diphtheria at least absolutely disproves the conclusions of Pasteur and others in regard to its origin.

Increase of Subluxations

It has been observed that in many instances the subluxation which existed previous to infection or contagion is greater and more noticeable during the febrile and active stage of the disease than before, and this fact has led some careless or insufficiently skilled palpaters to assume that the disease caused the subluxation.

The development of germ life is accompanied by the excretion of toxins of greater or less virulence which circulate through the blood and affect the entire body. This poison, irritating sensor nerves, brings about motor reactions in the segments irritated and, since the normal operation of the laws of reflex action is interrupted somewhat by subluxation, and since the muscles immediately around a subluxated vertebra tend to pull upon it with unequal leverage, this motor reaction is likely to increase already existing malalignments, especially in the same body segment in which the poison is generated and in which the irritation is consequently greatest. Thus subluxation is most pronounced during the activity of the disease caused by it and reacting upon it and thus a disease which began as a localized destructive process may manifest systemic effects through its action upon other abnormal spinal segments.