A Short History - Part 2
In which our hero goes up against .....
everyone?
John McTimoney was a gifted, stubborn,
opinionated genius who absolutely refused to compromise his philosophical
principles or those of chiropractic as he saw it.
D D Palmer, as anyone who has ploughed
through the collection of anecdotes, insights, vituperation and sometimes
gibberish, believed that chiropractic was a kind of magic bullet, the answer to
all our ills. His excesses were moderated to some extent by his son BJ and not
without a struggle! John McTimoney believed that chiropractic, with it's direct
access to the body's command and control centre, held the key to many of the
most common ailments that mankind was heir to. (When I began my training I
believed about 15% of his claims. Now thirty years down the road that has risen
to about 70% and I suspect that the inscription on my headstone will read ' OK
Mac, you were right!'.)
Needless to say
John's assertion that chiropractic could have an effect on
all
body systems and
all
diseases was about as welcome as diahorrea in a divers suit amongst his
comtempories even in the alternative medicine field ( indeed we still see the
GCC tying one hand behind the backs of its practitioners by punishing those who
dare to claim anything but the most mundane chassis-straightening functions for
chiropractic). Did Mr McTimoney care that his assertions flew in the face of all
medical knowledge at the time - he welcomed the controversy. Revelled in the
arguments it atttracted and honed his hypotheses on some of the brightest minds
around (his practice was a mere 25 miles from Oxford University and many of his
patients were highly placed tutors in its various colleges - indeed the
McTimoney motto was compiled by one such don ). He refused to budge on his basic
premise - that interference with the neural code was one of the the cornerstones
of much if not all of the disease process.
He was not popular even with other
chiropractors and understandably so. Here they were trying hard to ascend to the
hallowed ranks of the medical heirarchy and all the while they had this renegade
in the depths of Oxfordshire expounding hypotheses that would have had him
kicked out of the Chiropractic Association had he been a member. He was almost
as bad as DD who they had tried distance themselves from as well. The plain fact
is that DD was years ahead of his time and Mac was too. In fact it's a dreadful
paradox that, just as new advances in physics and neuropharmacology are
beginning to approach an explanation into which the chiropractic model fits
neatly, the governing bodies of chiropractic are trimming the flight feathers of
the profession with ruthless efficiency. If it doesn't fit the current level of
knowledge it's against the rules. Where have we heard this before. Fact is the
history of science is riddled with similar examples where gifted and farsighted
men and women have been pilloried for ideas which decades later are adopted into
the mainstream without so much as an embarassed
blush.
(to be continued...)
Posted: Sun - July 18, 2004 at 08:30 PM