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A woman I knew had been in a bad car accident. Her major injuries including a broken pelvis had been healed long before but she suffered from severe intermittent chronic pain and problems with her vision. MD's (including neurologists) had followed their usual shtick of saying it was all in her mind. But she had found a chiropractor in a distant part of the state who seemed to be able to offer her great relief usuing neck manipulation. To me this sounded very dangerous although it seemed like the guy was more careful than reckless amd I was very impressed with the results. The relief would last for a few months until some additional physical strain or injury aggravated the problem. To this woman it was worth a drive of hundreds of miles while experiencing severe pain because there was one person who could solve the problem.

I have always tended to look down on chiropractors, but they will never go away as long as they are able to offer people great subjective relief from conditions that MD's refuse to treat.

When a person is experiencing chronic pain it is very easy for an MD to "solve" the problem by saying that it is psychosomatic. There often is no test that can prove the pain is real or where in the nervous system it originates. The patient doesn't return to the same doctor, so the doctor sees the problem as solved and this encourages the doctor's feeling of self-righteous justification. There is also a "party-line" in medicine which doctors must follow to be a member of the club: 1. People with chronic pain are all just malingerers 2. Chiropractors are all complete charlatans; any perceived benefit from them is entirely psychosomatic.

If we had better technologies for locating and visualizing the sources of chronic pain, MD's might be able to actually help people more and thereby get some business back from chiropractors.