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One Cause, One Cure … How’s that for an audacious statement?! Now before anyone takes this message out of proper context and I find myself in front of a disciplinary board, please take the extra moment to read this article in its entirety.
This statement of “one cause, one cure” originates from early chiropractic philosophy on healing and is best illustrated by Dr. Fred Barge. I’ve taken an excerpt from his book Are you the Doctor, Doctor? which I’ve reprinted below: (Note: the bold-face type is my own emphasis, but the grammar is verbatim as Dr. Barge wrote it.) “… chiropractors work with the cause not the symptoms of the disease, and there is a truth only one cause and one cure in disease.
The cause? The body’s inability to comprehend itself and/or its environment. The cure? The body’s inability to heal itself. There is only one thing any doctor can do for a patient and that is to remove an obstacle (obstruction) to healing.
“When a surgeon’s knife removes a tumorous mass from a patient’s body, does that heal the body? Certainly not, but most certainly it does remove an obstacle to healing. When a medical physician applies an antibiotic to an infected wound, does it heal the wound?
Again, the answer is no, it merely has removed an obstacle to healing. When a psychiatrist or a psychologist works with a patient’s mind to relieve stress does that heal the body? Most certainly not, he has freed the body from an obstacle to healing.
“The same query can be asked of chiropractic. When a chiropractor adjusts and corrects a subluxation does that heal the body? And again, the answer is no, but our answer has always been no! The vertebral adjustment does not heal, it only releases the innate force which performs its healing wonders in proportion to the body’s capabilities. So in this same sense we, too, only remove an obstacle to healing.”
Is chiropractic is the "one cure" for all causes and diseases? Of course not! It is the body that heals, provided there is no obstacle in its ability to do so. The concept of “one cause, one cure” is actually not a chiropractic idea, but an observable and empirical truth about all body healing in all disciplines in health care.
Often, people visit the doctor, chiropractor, physiotherapist, specialist, surgeon, etc expecting for him or her to “fix” their problems so that they can get better again. Alas, that is not how healing works. All healing takes time (which varies depending on the nature of the problem), and even healing potential is limited by the severity of certain problems. I particularly like Dr. Barge’s comments with regards, “healing wonders in proportion to the body’s capabilities.
” Herein, he has identified that not all people, not all instances of the disease can or will heal, which is one of the biggest reasons that we as chiropractors cannot claim to heal, fix or treat problems. What this all boils down to is an important reminder not only for myself but for everyone who reads this article is that we must all respect the innate forces that govern body healing.
All of us in the medical and health realms do our earnest and best to remove obstacles of healing, but we are all bound by the limitations of physical matter, time, and each person’s own capacity to heal. “Nature needs no help, just no interference.”
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