By: Dr. Tom Morgan voice 770 748-6084 fax 770 748-4940 e-mail VolumeDC@aol.com THE HEART OF A CHIROPRACTOR When I graduated in the sixties, medicine was climbing toward its zenith in prestige and income. The specialist era was just reaching toward a sophisticated level as to disdain even the ordinary GP. One thing my teachers put in me at Palmer, was how to buffer a world sold on the false promises of medicine. We were to drive away from Brady Hill with a fanatical dedication to our chiropractic principles, and the need to get our patients to look at their subluxations, like we looked at them. Next, was a passion to adjust as many patients as possible, so as to increase our faith by witnessing innate¼s results. These results have kept us in the marketplace for the past one hundred years. This passion to prove the clinical efficacy of the adjustment to as many patients as possible, with as many different conditions created the heart of a chiropractor. Today, I still teach what was put in me more than thirty years ago: that if you adjust as many patients as possible in your working hours, you will have everything you need. It may not be everything you „want¾; but any introverted theme is not from the heart. I liked being separated from medicine, I liked patients coming to me when medicine had failed. It was as if we had to practice in a vacuum. We chiropractors had to meet all the time to keep each other „up¾, and away from medical propaganda. It is still that way today. In these early days of my practice, there was not sufficient money for research, so all our clinical success was anecdotal. Still, the passion to reach out to the sick and hopeless burned in the heart of the chiropractors. More important was our positive approach. We passed on to patients and students the chiropracTIC sense of being „right¾ in our drugless approach. We wanted to fight for our position in the health care market. We never got used to the smug degradation from medicine, but this never deterred our mission. The world was tilted toward the rich and powerful. The AMA wanted total dominance, but God is tilted toward the underdog, toward justice and truth. This fact I think, is the reason we survived and why we grew to fifty thousand chiropractors today. I look at all the power and money in medicine, and I think of Mary¼s song (Luke 1:52,53) „He (God) has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but sent the rich away empty¾. What I think we were, was obedient to the fact that our entire practices were tilted toward our principle of innate healing, instead of toward money, or another treatment for conditions. Those of us who burned inside with this passion to get our message, and our adjustment across, were part of the great renaissance that turned the volume up in the profession following the death of BJ. I think when BJ was driving the passion into us, we were segregated in our minds because of a technique, or a disdain for those who would use a modality to treat patients in pain. History has proven that BJs¼ early years of teaching about volume practice were still the fastest growth years in the profession. There were twenty one thousand people at Lyceum, in August of 1921. Back then, all the passion and dedication in the hearts of chiropractors were directed toward volume practice, and the good we could do for patients. Later, BJs strict technique doctrine created a split profession, one that tried to project doctors who were the „purest of the pure¾. But I would not be so quick to pull the trigger on our great developer. We stand on the shoulders of BJ and all the pioneer chiropractors. BJ, almost single handedly carried the profession forward for decades, before he turned toward the technique era. And who can say, if he had not undertaken such an aggressive spinal research project for his day, we may have been forced out of state licensing and not gained political solvency. The power and money of politics might have absorbed us or turned us toward becoming a crick and backache specialty. As a BJ man, I still hear his echoes when I read of those in our ranks who go from state to state testifying in court that a chiropractor can not be effective, and those who would push us toward prescriptions and medical amalgamation. But all this straight - mixer delemma did not change the heart of a chiropractor like the indemnity insurance years of the 1980s. As president of a state association and state board of examiners, I watched as almost overnight, my colleagues gravitated to seminars, where they would learn to collect more money from the insurance companies than there patients would ever pay. Because medicine could do this, they through it was our turn. It was a mad scramble to add on diagnostics and modalities while all the time lowering the volume and de-emphasizing the subluxation and long term family care. Even today, when I teach my clients the secrets of a cash practice, I see that puzzled look on the doctors faces who graduated in the eighties. I wait for them to cut through all my teaching, to the need to get back to focusing on results, and lean into the softness of greed and self serving practices. Here is their fatal remark: „I wish we could go back to the days when we got paid what we were worth¾. My greatest effort is aimed at detonating this attitude. Because this attitude in todays¼ climate, is almost suicidal. Still the hearts of these chiropractors can come back. I have seen doctors who are ready to quit practice because the insurance has petered out, and because they believe managed (mangled) care is forcing them out. Still my persistent hope is in the heart of a chiropractor. That heart that started in the Ryan building in Davenport Iowa, in 1895. When DD and BJ sent their students to the „highways and byways¾ of this world. If you truly believe that we need to be available to more and more people with our message of health, and where it originates; if you truly believe all your patients should get checked every week like we do for ourselves, and our family; if you truly believe that your patients should learn and understand their subluxations, and have them „managed¾ in our office on an on going basis; if your practice is passionate to this point; if you are more than just a „pain clinic¾ or an insurance provider, then you have the heart of a chiropractor. Do not let anyone bruise that heart. No doctor, no patient, not anyone. And, I salute you, I admire you. May God continue to bless you.