The Republican

IS OSTEOPATHY SLOW?
Many people have the idea that while osteopathy is a good thing, it is very slow in getting results and for that reason rather an expensive luxury. But let us see if that is true.

The vast majority of people who come to the osteopath have old chronic troubles which they have been accumulating for many years. In this class of disorders doctors of all schools recognize that recovery is necessarily slow. It is nothing unusual for medical doctors to devote several years to the treatment of a chronic case. It is quite commonly known in all schools that the length of time required for recovery is in more or less direct proportion to the length of time that the disorder has continued.

If, for example, an osteopath tells you that it will require six months to cure your constipation which has been troubling you for six or eight years, just bear in mind that no honest physician of any of the older schools would undertake to cure you in any less time. If he is thoroughly honest he will probably tell you that he cannot cure it at all with drugs, for it is well known that drugs do not cure chronic constipation, although in the long run they very frequently make it worse.

When we consider the acute troubles, recovery is usually much quicker under any method of treatment than is the case with chronic conditions. Do not expect a child to be sick or more than a week with a simple fever. We know that a large percentage of acute troubles will right themselves in a short time if they are only let alone. Indeed, it is admitted by authorities that drugs have little or no influence on the course of many of these troubles.

Is it not unfair to expect the osteopath to cure a chronic trouble in a few days, when the condition has been accumulating in the system for years?

Nature does not work in a hurry, no matter what school of healing is being employed. But we do maintain that, case for case, recoveries are quicker and more real under osteopathic treatment than under the older systems. Osteopathy is natural. Drugs are unnatural. It is easier to work with Nature than against Nature.

After all, the final test to the majority of people is the result. And results are what have brought osteopathy to its present stage of development. The sick person has a right to get something for his money as much as the customer of the merchant. We do not regret the dollar for which we get something satisfactory as much as we regret the dime we give up for nothing. And the case not substantially benefited by osteopathy is a rare one.