The Duluth Rip Saw

CHIROPRACTORS BOAST OF THEIR INFLUENZA RECORDS

Several Hundred New York Practitioners Credited With Not Losing a Single Case Duluth Chiropractors Lost No Cases Out of About One Hundred.

The wise old doctors express fears that another wave of the Spanish influenza, or some "flu" akin to it, has started on a winter stroll through the United States.

Locally, the omniscient disciples of Galen are clamoring for vaccination against smallpox, serums against influenza and assuring the public that they have antitoxins for various contagious diseases. Then the kindly old daily papers are telling about infantile paralysis on the range, smallpox in Wisconsin towns and something else that is catching over at St. Cloud.

Timid and tender-hearted mothers are trembling in fear lest some of these deadly germs come in contact with little Reginald or Angeline and snatch them away. The public is being duly warned that the dread "flu" once more may take heavy toll of Duluth's loved ones.

Worry and fear are great promoters of disease. Some claim that fear of disease kills nearly as many people as disease itself.

Entirely too many physicians boost their business by "throwing a scare" into the public. A good scare over contagious disease means a harvest for the heap big medicine men. Inoculating healthy little boys and girls with vaccine virus brings profitable fees and, entirely too often, puts a blood taint into the youthful systems. Serums, antitoxins and many other ethical nostrums make many purses lean and a few purses very fat.

Ethical physicians must not advertise—if it costs any money. "Thou shalt not advertise and pay for it" is a stern and inflexible commandment.

But, for example, a city physician or health commissioner issues a startling proclamation that scares the public and boosts the medical business. The health commissioner at Milwaukee, during the "flu" visitation last winter, said:

"If sick, no matter how slightly, see a physician."

"If that isn't drilling for business, in free newspaper space," says one critic, "what is?"

"Once he has fixed you up in bed," continues the critic, "here is what is drilled by way of free newspaper advertising: 'Stay in bed until your doctor says you can safely get up.' " But that's another story.

It's dollars to doughnuts, however, that enough scare stuff will be perpetrated on a helpless public the next few months to make a great many actually sick and some to lose their precious lives.

The "ethical regulars" are bumping up against some opposition in matters pertaining to medicine, sickness and health. The Chiropractic school now has legal standing and recognition in the state of Minnesota. There is a Chiropractic board and any Chiropractic practitioner cannot be haled before a magistrate without due cause. Vindictive and small-minded disciples of pills and drenching now will find it difficult to put a Chiropractic practitioner out of business without legal cause.

The believers in Chiropractic treatment do not seem to be scared stiff with fear of a recurrence of the dread influenza. It has been told up and down the town that the representative Chiropractors of Duluth had phenomenal success in treating influenza patients last fall and winter.

Desire for proof and full information resulted in interviews with Dr. Alexander Graham, 500 Columbia building; Dr. D. W. Riesland, 707 Palladio building; Dr. Paul J. Wentworth, 2031 West Superior street.

Those local Chiropractors stated that they treated an aggregate of about one hundred influenza patients last winter with the remarkable result that each and every case they attended made a complete recovery. Later on, during the spring and summer, they declared that they had treated many cases of so-called after-effects of the dread disease with marked benefit.

"Chiropractic success in influenza cases," collectively declared these Chiropractors, "was not confined to Duluth alone, but was equally characteristic in the high percentage of successes throughout the entire world wherever this method was employed."

Down in Davenport, Iowa, statistics compiled, making comparisons between treatment by "regular" physicians and Chiropractors, were most startling as follows:

Number of cases under "regular" medical care, 4,953; number of "regular" physicians, 50; number of deaths under medical care, 274.

Number of cases given chiropractic treatment, 1,633; number of chiropractors, 150; number of deaths under chiropractic treatment, one.

The New York Globe in a recent issue calls attention to the claims of Chiropractors, of which there are several hundred in New York, to the effect that, throughout the entire influenza epidemic last winter, not a single one of their patients was lost. In other words, those New York Chiropractors scored 100 per cent—all their influenza patients recovered.

The foregoing being a fact, then the Chiropractors seem justified in assuming that had all the victims of influenza been given Chiropractic treatment, the entire country would now be richer by over 400,000 human lives.

When human lives are at stake, any method of treatment, logically, is well worth investigating.