ILIAC ADJUSTMENTS
Palpation
With patient sitting erect on flat surface, feet on floor, stand behind and examine both sacroiliac articulations at once with the palmar surfaces of the fingers of both hands. If the two articulations are similar in every line neither ilium is subluxated, though the sacrum may be rotated on its transverse axis between the ilia, so as to be posterior or anterior at base or apex.
But no examination of the ilia is complete without investigating also the lumbosacral articulation. It sometimes happens that though the first sacral spinous process naturally completes the lumbar curve and there is no lumbosacral subluxation the crests of both ilia appear much posterior to their normal relation to the upper part of sacrum: this is a double iliac displacement.
Usually the ilia are both normally articulated; this is one of the most difficult joints to weaken and is seldom affected except by the most extreme force. When iliac subluxation exists one side is affected alone nine times out of ten. The tenth case may show double subluxation.
Movement
Nine-tenths of the so-called “iliac adjustments” are quite amusingly ineffective. The force required really to move an ileum (save in joint disease or in children) is tremendous and not to be commanded by the ordinary adjuster. The light jars applied as a routine procedure by so many Chiropractors are in reality nothing more than single percussion strokes which stimulate the sacral nerves.
Place patient in position B and apply the hands to a posterior ilium as to a posterior sacrum, making contact with the most prominent portion of crest or posterior border and driving in a direction which would represent a part of the circumference of a circle of which the transverse sacral axis of rotation touches the center, or the center of fixation in the sacroiliac joint.