Can Medicine and Chiropractic Practice Side-by-Side?
Over the last hundred years, medicine and chiropractic have competed at many levels to provide primary healthcare. In efforts to reach parity, chiropractors engaged in what one chiropractic publication characterized as “indulg[ing] in overclaim and lioniz[ing] their profession” (Chapman-Smith 1988). In the 1980s the competitive tension between medicine and chiropractic achieved greater equilibrium. The frequent inability of the medical profession to provide the desired benefits to patients with musculoskeletal back complaints (Deyo 1983) and chiropractors’ more moderate claims about their ability to diagnose and treat non-neuromusculoskeletal problems enabled chiropractic to gain greater legitimacy. Although organized medicine opposed professional contact between…
