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
Mental diseases—so-called—usually depend upon disturbance of the blood-supply to the brain, controlled by the Cervical sympathetic. Adjustments, relieving the pressure on the sympathetic ganglia or cord and perhaps the direct impingement from the vertebral arteries, restore a normal circulation to the brain. The time required by Nature to effect a cure depends upon the rapidity with which the impingement is removed and the amount and character of the damage to brain tissue which must be repaired. The cure often requires time for a change of materials in brain cells or fibre tracts, by which they are reconstructed and again become capable of expressing normal function.