Might & Main

On the fifth and last day of their convention in Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria hotel last week, President John E. Rogers of the American Osteopathic Association appeared distinctly tired. A stout, red-faced man, dressed in a single-breasted blue jacket, white trousers and shoes, he walked about the sombre halls, holding in his hand a dead cigar butt and a tube of Ipana toothpaste.

President Rogers, 52, twelve years an osteopath, an outstanding citizen of Oshkosh, Wis., where he is president of the Kiwanis Club, vice president of the Welfare Board and commodore of the Power Boat Club, had had a happy, busy, exciting week. Of the 9,000 osteopaths in the U. S., over 2,000 were at the convention. Their special bypath of curing disease by actual might & main is, they feel, on the upgrade. And they looked to President Rogers to keep pushing it higher by metaphorical might & main.

Osteopaths have six approved educational institutions which, in imitation of the American Medical Association's nomenclature, they call Class A: Chicago College of Osteopathy; College of Osteopathic Physicians & Surgeons (Los Angeles) ; Des Moines Still College of Osteopathy; Kansas City College of Osteopathy & Surgery; Kirksville (Mo.) College of Osteopathy & Surgery; Philadelphia College of Osteopathy.

When graduates of those osteopathic schools tried to practice in Canada on the same footing as graduates of medical schools, Dean Frederick Etherington of Queens University Faculty of Medicine, Kingston, Ont., inspected four of the U. S. colleges of osteopathy. Last year he reported thus: "I shudder to envisage the result to women in childbirth if their care were placed in the hands of those who do not believe in and have not been thoroughly trained in the bacterial cause of infection. And what dire calamities would immediately and inevitably befall our great centres of population, if their supplies of food and water and their sewage systems were controlled, not by men who had devoted long and arduous years to the medical sciences, but by those uninstructed and misinformed individuals who believe disease (for instance, typhoid and diphtheria) to result from the pressure of bony irregularities upon nerve?"

Last week Osteopathy's Rogers called the investigation by Medicine's Etherington "absolutely false, prejudiced, and malicious." By way of rebuttal Dr. Rogers reported thus on an inspection of Osteopathy's Class A colleges which he made last year with the help of specialists in osteopathic pedagogy.

"The manner in which boards are now constituted and perpetuated is contrary to what is generally regarded as sound principles of educational administration. . . . The colleges have an investment of $2,826,268.81. . . . Laboratory facilities as a whole do not come up to the high standing desired. . . . Library facilities in all institutions are inadequate. ... It seems in general that the calibre of those teaching osteopathy today is very comparable to the faculties of other professional institutions. . . . The quality of instruction in the main is good. ... At the present time we have as a requirement for admission the completion of a four-year high-school course or its equivalent. Two of our schools have placed an added requirement, following the requirements very closely of those demanded by Class A medical schools. ... At this moment our colleges, each of them, is in dire need of endowment. . . ."

This osteopathic attention to education represents but one effort of osteopaths' uphill struggle for respect of the nation and respect for themselves as professional men and women. Last week's convention in Manhattan was novel in its lack of brawling denunciation of Osteopathy's "enemies"--i. e., the medical profession. Osteopaths now frown on blatant advertising. They have a Bureau of Public Health & Education "to place some osteopathic literature in every public library, school library and newspaper library in America."

All osteopaths last week argued that Osteopathy is a full-fledged profession. Their own evidence, however, proved that Osteopathy is still a cult, although the lustiest and most learned of the many cults which growl on the outskirts of orthodox Medicine. Sign that Osteopathy may be absorbed in the great body of Medicine before many decades, much as Homeopathy was absorbed during the last century, is the fact that many medical orthopedists now use osteopathic techniques to treat diseases of the joints, bones and muscles. It is also a fact that most osteopaths are well-grounded in all the medical sciences and practice medicine scientifically, with well-tested reasons for their diagnoses, well-tested reasons for their treatments. Another sign of this evolution from cult to profession is that, in the face of potential displeasure by the potent, cult-flaying American Medical Association, 32 astute manufacturers of medicines, surgical instruments, medical supplies, medical books and foods who had selling exhibits at the A. M. A.'s convention in Kansas City last May, had duplicate exhibits at the American Osteopathic Association's convention in Manhattan last week.

Last week the Journal of the American Medical Association reported a cure for some kinds of facial neuralgia by "repositioning" the sufferer's jaws. Dr. James Bray Costen, assistant professor of otolaryngology at St. Louis' Washington University Medical School, discovered that when the back teeth are extracted or wear down the mandibular joints which hinge the lower jaw to the skull are pulled askew by the powerful muscles of the face, press abnormally upon facial nerves, cause facial neuralgia, headache, earache, burning tongue. Dr. Costen cures those pains by repositioning the jaws with caps over eroded molars, false teeth in edentulous mouths.

Last week in Manhattan, Osteopath Perrin Thacher Wilson of Cambridge, Mass., reported that for 35 years he has cured facial neuralgia by repositioning the mandibular joints. Whereas Dr. Costen uses dental crutches to realign the jaws, Dr. Wilson wriggles them into position by repeated osteopathic manipulation.

Although Osteopath Wilson is a graduate doctor of medicine and has done research at Boston's Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, he believes in the "osteopathic lesion." This "lesion" is supposed to be a mechanical maladjustment of a joint, muscle, ligament or other tissue in the body. By correcting such lesions by might and main osteopaths claim that they can cure virtually all diseases. Thus in Manhattan last week they reported the following cases:

P: Influenza, sinusitis, respiratory inflammations, duodenal ulcers, heart disease and other ailments "respond quickly" when Osteopath Chester L. Farquharson of Houston, Tex., manipulates his patients' ribs into their proper places.

P: Osteopath Paul Snyder of Philadelphia, "removes the cause of catarrhal deafness, overcomes the consequences of sinusitis and also the susceptibility to colds which is a usual attribute of deafness" by sticking his little finger into the back of the patient's throat and wriggling the tip into the patient's Eustachian tubes.

P: "Osteopathic manipulations to stimulate circulation in the affected parts and thus build up the natural immunity of the body against the onslaught of the virus of infantile paralysis was the only treatment of the disease which proved its effectiveness. Osteopathic treatment after the disease ran its course has uniformly shown improvement in paralytic conditions."-- Osteopath James Watson of Los Angeles.

P: "Poor circulation, principal cause of cold feet, may be produced by spinal lesions which weaken the nerve and blood supply to the feet, or it may be caused locally by direct pressure upon nerves and blood vessels from badly designed or ill-fitting shoes."--Osteopath Philip Spence of White Plains, N. Y.

P: "The osteopathic physician should rejoice that he has at his command a system of midwifery which utilizes the body's resources, thereby tending to produce healthy young. This system increases body resistance and safeguards the patient against diseases that may occur during pregnancy; it shortens the period of labor, reduces pain and minimizes the necessity of using anesthetics as well as the amount in which they are employed. The infant mortality rate in childbirth under osteopathic technique is only 37 per 1,000, as compared with 65 per 1,000 for cases handled by the medical profession. . . . The osteopathic maternal death rate is only 2.8 per 1,000, as compared with the nation's average of more than 6 for each 1000."-- Osteopath Margaret Jones, Kansas City.

P: "My boys are getting smarter each year."--Osteopath Harrison ("Buck'') Weaver, trainer of the St. Louis Cardinals.

P: "Presidential Candidate Alfred Mossman Landon of Topeka, gets osteopathic treatments regularly once a week."-- Anonymous Osteopath at the AOA convention last week.

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