The medical profession has embarked upon a campaign for the monopoly of treatment. It has drafted a Bill “Medicines and Surgical Appliances (Advertisement) Bill,” designed to destroy the possibility of anyone outside the organized medical profession diagnosing or treating disease. Dieticians, Herbalists, Osteopaths, etc. will not be allowed to practice if this Bill should pass. The misleading title of this measure shows that its promoters have acted with bad faith.
Some little time ago the Osteopaths promoted a Bill for the better training and registration of Osteopaths. It was violently opposed in the House of Lords by Lord Moynihan and Lord Dawson of Penn. The following extracts from speeches made by distinguishing peers, criticising orthodox medicine and supporting Osteopaths, will show the opinion of orthodox medicine held by some of the most distinguished members of the House of Lords. –EDITOR, “HEAL THYSELF”.
VISCOUNT ELIBANK: My Lords, the Bill to which I am going to ask you to give a Second Reading has been introduced twice into the House of Commons in the course of the present Parliament by Mr. Boothby, the Member for East Aberdeen. Its main purpose is to establish by Act of Parliament a Board armed with the necessary powers and authority to compile a register of osteopaths, and to regulate the practice of this new system of therapeutics in this country.
The other main object aimed at in the Bill is to impose upon the practitioners of this system a prescribed standard of professional training and technical competence, which will debar unqualified and incompetent persons from setting themselves up, as they now do, as osteopaths, claiming to be able to practice a system of manipulative therapeutics outside the ambit of the Medical Acts.
May I briefly explain what osteopathy is, and why its practitioners ask Parliament to legislate on the lines of this Bill? In non-technical terms osteopathy is a system of healing which dispenses largely with the use of drugs or the surgical knife, and lays emphasis mainly upon a standardized manipulative technique in dealing with bodily ailments. The system is differentiated, osteopaths claim, from ordinary medicine and surgery.
Osteopathy claims to be a system of drugless medicine and bloodless surgery, in the sense that it relies mainly in the treatment of disease upon the principle that most disease, if not all, have their origin in some maladjustment or misplacement of the body framework. Fundamentally, I suppose, the difference is that the osteopath does not rely, as the regular medical practitioner does, upon the use of drugs in the treatment of disease. He relies mainly upon a manipulative technique, the purpose of which is to restore the body mechanism to its proper work.
The osteopath, generally speaking, does not believe that drugs effect a cure. He thinks the body itself, when it functions properly, will produce its own remedy for disease, which originates, in his view, in some kind of structural impairment in the first place. Unlike the ordinary medical man, who relies in the treatment of disease upon something called medicine which he puts into the body, or by cutting something out of the body, the osteopath relies upon the curative action of the bodys own resources to produce, under the skilled touch of the manipulative surgeon, the medicinal agencies which will cure a disease.
Obviously, the difference between these two schools is fundamental. I may have simplified unduly the nature of the differences between them, but the point I wish to emphasize is that there is a difference in the view as to how disease originates and a difference in the method of treatment when a disease appears. I respectfully submit that, although your Lordships are not called upon to adjudicate in this conflict of theory, the House is entitled, and indeed should, as a matter of public policy, say that the existing laws regulating medical practice shall not allow any unnecessary or unreasonable obstacles to lie in the way of each school of thought developing its system for what it is worth.
Parliament, I am sure, did not intend to confer upon any school of medical theory powers which would interfere with the development of an alternative theory regarding the causation and cure of disease. The Medical Acts were, I believe, primarily intended to ensure that the practitioners of the healing art should be fully qualified, and that unqualified persons should not be allowed to exploit the public by claiming to possess the qualifications in respect of medical education and professional training which the medical men have to prove they possess before they are registered.
Registration under the Medical Acts was, I submit, intended to be a method of distinguishing between the qualified and unqualified practitioners for the protection of the public. It was not intended to be an obstacle in the way of developing medical science or preventing the discovery and use of new methods or new principles in the treatment of disease.
Undoubtedly the medical law, as it now stands, does impede the development of an independent system of treatment of disease such as osteopathy claims to be. According to the existing medical laws, unregistered practitioners, whether they are qualified as practitioners of osteopathy, or whether they have merely an empirical knowledge of manipulative surgery, or whether they are merely ignorant and incompetent, are all classed in the same category and stigmatized as quacks and charlatans.
A registered medical man is not permitted by the competent authority controlling his profession to act even as an anaesthetist to an osteopath. It is within the recollection of your Lordships House that one medical man of high and unblemished reputation was penalized for so acting.
That was Dr. Axham. Other cases could be cited. My object, however, is not to prolong that controversy or to revive unhappy memories, but rather to plead that the time has come to frame a plan for avoiding in the future such causes of controversy and quarrel among those who are, I am sure, all anxious to do their best, according to their own lights, to develop the art and science of healing for the good of humanity. This Bill will, I believe, attain this desirable aim.
In this Bill there is nothing which will enable an osteopath to obtain admission to the medical register. The osteopaths are not asking for admission to the medical profession.
They are asking that they shall be admitted to an osteopaths register; that only qualified osteopaths shall be registered; that the qualifications for registration shall in their own particular way be as strict, as definite and as onerous as those which admit to the medical register; that no osteopath shall be allowed to practice unless he is on the register of osteopaths; and that those who are admitted to the register as properly qualified osteopaths shall be allowed to claim the qualifications which in fact they do possess, and to use such titles and descriptions as will identify them as osteopathic practitioners and as nothing else.
The purpose of this Bill is to prevent the practice of osteopathy by those who are not qualified, to distinguish between registered and unregistered osteopaths, and to prohibit the practice of osteopathy under any name by unqualified, which means non-registered, persons, and incidentally thereby to protect the public. This Bill ensures that; nothing more and nothing less. It will establish a register similar to the register maintained under the authority of the General Medical Council for ordinary doctors, and it will establish a Board which will include amongst its members independent persons with scientific and technical qualifications, selected by the Ministry of Health.
There are very few if any noble Lords in this Assembly who cannot point to some case or another where osteopathic treatment has been of the greatest value either to themselves or to some friend. Even the medical profession is not agreed on this point, and there are broadminded medical practitioners who to-day send their patients on for osteopathic treatment. Since I introduced this Bill I have received letters from all over the country congratulating me on having introduced it and giving me instances of advantageous treatment which has been given to the writers by osteopaths.
LORD GAINFORD: My Lords, I had not come here for the purpose of making a speech, but I am absolutely convinced in my own mind that osteopathy, as practised in this country, is of enormous benefit to a great number of people. I, myself, have known many accidents to many parts of the body, at polo, cricket, football and other pursuits, and I have seen a great number of other accidents, and I have come to the conclusion that osteopathy is the best cure for nearly all these troubles. Convinced as I am that it is in many cases the only way in which parts of the body can be restored to a proper condition, I believe it is advisable that a Bill of this kind should go before a Select Committee and be thoroughly thrashed out there by witnesses and evidence.
