A Doctor's Reputation

by William D. Esteb

How is it that medical doctors, with their crude attempts at finding a chemical solution to every disease of the body (or removing the offending part) became accepted? And how is it that the chiropractic doctor, with their location and correction of the cause of disease has remained largely unrespected and ignored? How did this happen and how can this injustice be reversed?

Like lawyers of the 17th and 18th century, doctors were among the most educated and respected in their communities. These were individuals who had a larger world view than the farmers and simple shop keepers of the time. This was an era in which a large portion of the world was tied to the land, either as farmers or herders of domesticated animals. Only the children of large land owners and the very rich could afford a college education. Becoming a professional and giving back to the community in the form of legal help or medical aid was seen as the duty of many in this elite class. In fact, many spurned payment of any kind for their services.

Simultaneous with the emergence of the legal and medical professional, there were profound changes in the religious and intellectual climate in Western Europe. Dissection of the human body was prevented by the powerful Catholic church until 1733, preventing even the most rudimentary understanding of bodily function! This was the time of Galileo, Newton, Copernicus, and others who, with the telescope, mathematics, and new intellectual freedoms, produced a mechanistic view of the world that remained in place well into the recent past with the acceptance of Einsteinian view of the world. Even the theories of Darwin contain somewhat of a mechanistic, form follows function ideology. As the Industrial Age dawned in the early 1800s, the physiology of the human body became heavily influenced by the prevailing mechanistic world view. Like interchangeable gun parts that allowed mass production methods, the body was seen as a complex machine with individual and separate parts. Disease and ill-health was not seen as a whole body phenomenon, but as an isolated part that was broken, wearing out, or somehow out of step with the rest of the body. Medicine was seen as the way to "speed up" organs or systems that were not functioning enough or "slowing down" organs or systems that were functioning too much. Chemistry was seen as the management tool to tend the human machine.

While the Industrial Age did free some from the 18 hour days of back-breaking soil tending, most people became harnessed to factory machines instead. This continued to isolate more and more people from the time and financial resources necessary to attend schools of higher learning and escape the exploitation that a lack of education produced. Besides the lack of understanding the general public (and doctors of the time) had of human physiology, sanitary standards were still woefully absent. Besides providing fertile conditions for TB, and other infectious diseases, it became a compelling environment for the germ theory to emerge. Suddenly it became accepted that germs were the cause of disease. This theory so easily explained the prevailing, cause-effect, mechanistic view of the world that was obvious to the five senses. Sick people had obvious symptoms and "germs" were present.

Vaccinations seemed the perfect mechanistic solution to this menace and countless millions had their immune systems modified to combat the threat of invisible viruses. And it seemed to work. No matter that simultaneously sanitary conditions improved and better personal hygiene became more prevalent, there seemed a statistically measurable reduction in communicable diseases and vaccinations received the credit.

The scientific method, with control groups and placebos gave the culture something to cling to. There became a growing mistrust of the body and its propensity to sin and generate unclean thoughts, and most of the Western world saw a religious revival of huge proportion. It was estimated that in the mid-1800s that as much as 80% of the population were regular church-goers. (Today that figure is closer to half as many.) As ill-health and disease were seen as something caused by outside sources it became more and more accepted that solutions should come from outside the body too.

As we entered the early 1900s the curriculum of medical schools, which at the time included less than a year of formal education, became more comprehensive. More schooling was required as more and more combinations and permutations of diseases were discovered, documented, and chemical or surgical interventions (outside forces) were devised to combat them. Ultimately this system produced specialists who limited their careers to understanding narrow aspects of human physiology and pathology.

As the germ theory became more and more entrenched, diagnosing and learning the countless therapies used to combat "the enemy" made medical school increasingly expensive and reserved for the best and the brightest. It became somewhat of a cliche' that the highest hope a mother could have for her son was to become a doctor and join the ranks of the country's most elite and respected professional class. This class distinction, while not as tyrannical as the caste system of India, created a privileged few who were granted access to increasingly powerful drugs and the skills of surgical intervention.

Doctors knowingly or unknowingly exploited this advantage over their patients. With authority they prescribed and directed patient behavior without question (doctor's orders). The general population, with their ignorance of even the most fundamental human physiology were grateful even to see a doctor. The medical doctor's words were taken as gospel, without reservation. Patients willingly waited for hours for a brief encounter with the all knowing doctor who had, at considerable personal sacrifice, performed the required book learning and internship to be granted the responsibility of shepherding a practice of patients through the unseen dangers of a disease-filled world. Nature became the enemy.

With the demands placed upon these few anointed individuals, patient management practices were adopted to increase efficiency. Patients routinely waited in magazine-filled reception rooms. Births were routinely induced to the more convenient schedule of the treating doctor. More and more technology, more and more tests, and more and more invasive procedures were used. Low tech solutions were spurned, and more and more respect (and dependence) were given to technological breakthroughs. Powerful antibiotics, organ transplants, DNA splicing, in utero micro surgery, test tube babies, and other exotic procedures first made front page news, and then became routine and expected. If certain problems didn't respond to the high-tech approach, it became the patient's fault or it was all in the patient's head.

And then things started to change. The baby boom generation emerged. In the United States over 76 million strong, they became the most educated group in history. They changed the world in a most profound way. They questioned authority figures in all disciplines. They asked questions. Their favorite? "Why?" They sought second opinions. They became a generation accustomed to medical miracles, chemical birth control, polio vaccinations, antibiotics, and routine medical success stories. This same generation is watching their parents die of cancers, hypertension, heart disease, and countless preventable lifestyle diseases that don't seem to fit the germ theory model.

While there are exceptions, this generation has more of a potential to be available to the chiropractic message than any before it. If chiropractic is going to assume its rightful place in the health care sciences, it must act on the opportunity presented by the emergence of the baby boom generation. How are you making "low-tech" health care approaches (like chiropractic), attractive to this highly-educated generation weaned on a medical model of health?

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My Report of Findings
Originally published in 1993
240 Pages
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