Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 229, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 September 1915 — Chiropractors Versus “Regulars.” [ARTICLE]

Chiropractors Versus “Regulars.”

To the Editor of The Star: The action of the Ihdiana State Medical Association in voting to appropriate money to fight the chiropractirs in the next legislature is only a repetition of what we had to contend with at the last session of the legislature when the medical men introduced laws that would have put us in the penitentiary if they had succeeded in passing them. The general public did not approve of such a measure, neither will it approve of the effort to again pass such a law. The association is trying to force men and women to patronize only medical men, regardless of their personal desires. What must the public think of a profession that will ask laws of this nature ?

If there are quacks in the chiropractic rangs, and no doubt but there are, the medical men are to blame for them; they will not permit us to secure a law establishing a chiropractic examining board so that only qualified chiropractors would be permitted to practice. We presented a law at the last session of the legislature asking for such a board and making the educational requirements high enough to suit the objections of the medical men, and yet they simply said to the senate committee, “Yes the educational requirements are enough, but we do not want them licensed by any other than our medical examining ward.” We refused and will continue to refuse this proposition of their’s, as it will make it necessary for us to attend a medical school two years and then our own the required number of years. Might as well advocate* that ocomotive engineers could examine an electric engineer or motorman as to expect a medical board to examine chiropractors. We do not use medicine or practice medicine, then why should we be made to study medicine and pass a medical board? We do not hear objections to our practicing except it be from the medical men and their allies. The object of medical men should be and I trust it is to restore the ailing to health and to help those in heatlh to remain so. If this be true, why can they ob.ect to those who are doing the same work, though it be in a different manner? The chiropractor gets those who have given medicine years of trial and failed to get results. The medical men' get the first chance; it is only when they fail that the chiropractor is hunted up. The medical men must perfect their science so that they can cure, then all other methods will be unnecessary and will fail as a consequence. Let us remember that no one system of cure for sickness has yet been perfected, and until that time comes, permit each man to choose his own doctor. The chiropractors have no fight upon any system of healing and believe in the right of each individual to choose the system and doctor that he wishes. FRANK J. WRIGHT, D. C. Indianapolis.