To be serious, I ask you to think of “the finest anatomists in the world” doing their “original research” work in the dissecting-room under the direction of a man of the scholarly attainments indicated by the composition and thought of the above article. Do you see now how Osteopaths get a “vast and perfect knowledge of anatomy”?
Do you suppose that the law of “the survival of the fittest” determines who continues in the practice of Osteopathy and succeeds? Is it true worth and scholarly ability that get a big reputation of success among medical men? I know, and many medical men know from competition with him (if they would admit that such a fellow may be a competitor), that the ignoramus who as a physician is the product of a diploma mill often has a bigger reputation and performs more wonderful cures (?) than the educated Osteopath who really mastered the prescribed course but is too conscientious to assume responsibility for human life when he is not sure that he can do all that might be done to save life.
I once met an Osteopath whose literary attainments had never reached the rudiments of an education. He had never really comprehended a single lesson of his entire course. He told me that he was then on a vacation to get much-needed rest. He had such a large practice that the physical labor of it was wearing him out. I knew of this fellow’s qualifications, but I thought he might be one of those happy mortals who have the faculty of “doing things,” even if they cannot learn the theory. To learn the secret of this fellow’s success, if I could, I let him treat me. I had some contracted muscles that were irritating nerves and holding joints in tense condition, a typical case, if there are any, for an Osteopathic treatment. The fellow began his “treatment.” I expected him to do some of that “expert Osteopathic diagnosing” that you have heard of, but he began in an aimless desultory way, worked almost an hour, found nothing specific, did nothing but give me a poor unsystematic massage. He was giving me a “popular treatment.”
In many towns people have come to estimate the value of an Osteopathic treatment by its duration. People used to say to me, “You don’t treat as long as Dr. ——, who was here before you,” and say it in a way indicating that they were hardly satisfied they had gotten their money’s worth. Some of them would say: “He treated me an hour for seventy-five cents.” Does it seem funny to talk of adjusting lesions on one person for an hour at a time, three times a week?
My picture of incompetency and apparent success of incompetents, is not overdrawn. The other day I had a marked copy of a local paper from a town in California. It was a flattering write-up of an old classmate. The doctor’s automobile was mentioned, and he had marked with a cross a fine auto shown in a picture of the city garage. This fellow had been considered by all the Simple Simon of the class, inferior in almost every attribute of true manliness, yet now he flourishes as one of those of our class to whose success the school can “point with pride.”
It is interesting to read the long list of “changes of location” among Osteopaths, yet between the lines there is a sad story that may be read. How often I have followed these changes. First, “Doctor Blank has located in Philadelphia, with twenty-five patients for the first month and rapidly growing practice.” A year or so after another item tells that “Doctor Blank has located in San Francisco with bright prospects.” Then “Doctor Blank has returned to Missouri on account of his wife’s health, and located in ——, where he has our best wishes for success.” Their career reminds us of Goldsmith’s lines:
“As the hare whom horn and hounds pursue
Pants to the place from whence at first he flew.”
There has been many a tragic scene enacted upon the Osteopathic stage, but the curtain has not been raised for the public to behold them. How many timid old maids, after saving a few hundred dollars from wages received for teaching school, have been persuaded that they could learn Osteopathy while their shattered nerves were repaired and they were made young and beautiful once more by a course of treatment in the clinics of the school. Then they would be ready to go out to occupy a place of dignity and honor, and treat ten to thirty patients per month at twenty-five dollars per patient.
Gentlemen of the medical profession, from what you know of the aggressive spirit that it takes to succeed in professional life to-day (to say nothing of the physical strength required in the practice of Osteopathy), what per cent. of these timid old maids do you suppose have “panted to the place from whence at first they flew,” after leaving their pitiful little savings with the benefactors of humanity who were devoting their splendid talents to the cause of Osteopathy?
If any one doubts that some Osteopathic schools are conducted from other than philanthropic motives, let him read what the Osteopathic Physician said of a new school founded in California. Of all the fraud, bare-faced shystering, and flagrant rascality ever exposed in any profession, the circumstances of the founding of this school, as depicted by the editor of the Osteopathic Physician, furnishes the most disgusting instance. Men to whom we had clung when the anchor of our faith in Osteopathy seemed about to drag were held up before us as sneaking, cringing, incompetent rascals, whose motives in founding the school were commercial in the worst sense. And how do you suppose Osteopaths out in the field of practice feel when they receive catalogues from the leading colleges that teach their system, and these catalogues tell of the superior education the colleges are equipped to give, and among the pictures of learned members of the faculty they recognize the faces of old schoolmates, with glasses, pointed beards and white ties, silk hats maybe, but the same old classmate of—sometimes not ordinary ability.