A young fellow who has put out his knee at football– and it happens again and again — never thinks of going to a doctor; if he did, he would be told to lie up for three months, and probably get a permanently stiff leg. He goes to an osteopath and in a week he is playing again. If young people get tennis elbow, they do not go to a doctor; if they did they would not be allowed to play tennis again that season. They go to an osteopath and they are playing tennis the next day. I could give hundreds of cases within my own knowledge, among my friends, where the osteopath has done much good.
Lord Moynihan said grudgingly that perhaps people received some benefit from what he called “an alien cult” founded on no research. He was not entirely in agreement with his colleague, Lord Dawson, who said he was not here to deride osteopathy. But after their remarks I am obliged with some reluctance to remind your Lordships that the medical profession is the closest and most jealous trade union in the world, and that the General Medical Council has obstructed and resisted and crabbed and derided a very great many advances in medical science.
Notably the great discovery of Jenner was resisted and ridiculed in exactly the same way as osteopathy is to-day. But the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, would have you believe that medical science of to-day depends upon some immutable principles which were laid down for ever with the force of divine law by the Medical Act of 1858, and he tells you that if you pass this Bill for the registration and regulation of osteopaths, it would impair those principles and set aside all the defences which have been raised for the protection of the public.
I could easily give many instances in which doctors have diagnosed cases wrongly and treated them wrongly. I myself might say with some justice that I have suffered much at the hands of many physicians, and spent my substances and been no better, but rather worse; and that is quite a common thing. I really cannot understand anybody going out of his way to refuse a Second Reading to a measure of this kind, talking about it as inflicting an irreparable calamity upon the very basis on which medical science rests.
All that is most arrant nonsense, and I hope that your Lordships will not put yourselves in the false position of refusing to a profession which now exists for good, and is very widely extending in this country, the necessary measure of protection. If you refer this Bill to a Select Committee, as has been suggested, you will be on perfectly safe lines, as the Committee can call witnesses, and there you can get the whole of the reasons, for and against, set down and recorded so that there may be no false judgment.
