This story about unnecessary surgery appeared in the first textbook for chiropractic in 1906. Although its style is quaint and antiquated, it makes a strong point about our health care system, and the challenges we still face today.
Sensible Suggestions
“If you should let your watch fall, get some part of it displaced, or damaged, so that it does not keep good time, or refuses to run, you would take it to a jeweler. Suppose, upon examination, he should tell you that he should have to take out one or more cogs, or remove a wheel, in order to make it keep good time; would you leave it with him? Not for one minute. You would say: “I have carried that watch for many years; it has served me faithfully; it has always kept correct time, and you cannot make me believe that the factory put in too many wheels or cogs.”
Why not use as good judgment in regard to your mother, wife or daughter, whose value is immeasurably greater than that of the watch? You would not let a jeweler take out any portion of it; but when your mother, wife or daughter has had a fall, or met with some injury, displacing some portion of her anatomy, you at once call in the family physician whom you have learned to love and respect. He makes a diagnosis and prescribes for her. Day after day he calls, takes the temperature, respiration, feels the pulse, which does not aid in locating the cause of her trouble. He finally advises you to take her to the hospital. There they decide that an operation must be performed; some parts of her person must be removed; they have done all else they know, and they must continue to do something.
You would not trust your watch in the care of one whom your best reason tells you would ruin it by the removal of some of its works; but you will trust one whom you love far more than the watch, to the tender mercies of those who rifle them of their motherhood. You listen to the sophistry of the wise doctors; he is willing to take the responsibility as far as words go and assures you that the operation will put her on the road to recovery. You know that the Creator did not put any useless organs in her any more than the factory did too many wheels in the watch. With dread and fear you finally leave her, although you cannot but think that the responsibility, the gain or loss, and the payment of the bill, all rests upon you and not upon the physician.
You cease to use your reason. You take your watch to the jeweler, who removes two cogs, or a wheel, and returns it to you, saying, “I hope it will now be all right.” When you took your watch to him it did run, but it did not keep correct time; now, to your chagrin, you find that it will not go at all.
You leave your mother, wife or daughter in the hands of the despoiler. In time she returns home, pale, emaciated and weak. But the surgeon assures you that all she needs is time and rest. You are doomed to disappointment, for you find that time and the doctor’s knife has not improved her condition; on the contrary, she is now more helpless than before you spent her time, vitality, and your money.
You tell the jeweler the condition of your watch. He speaks of his years of apprenticeship, of his experience in business, that he can take the works of a watch all out, and did so with yours; he found that it had too many wheels, which made it run too fast, and that probably there are too many in there yet; if you will let him have it once more, he will call in some of his neighbors of like craft, who are well skilled in that line. They will examine it with an eye glass, to see just what the trouble really is, thus you are persuaded to again leave your watch.
Your family physician calls on you and tells you that he possibly did not take out the right organ, and advises you to return her to the hospital; they will hold a consultation and advise with the medical staff which will determine to a certainty just what and how much should be removed. You again yield your better judgment to one in whom you have all confidence; and she is again taken from home and friends.
In the meantime, your watch is returned, or rather, what is left of it. It no longer looks like the perfect timepiece you once carried with so much pride, when everyone admired it and thought it such a beauty. The case is battered and full of wrinkles, it bears no resemblance to its former self; it is ruined beyond all possibility of repair.
Your mother, wife or daughter, as the case may be is again brought home, or at least what is left of her; but she bears no resemblance to the person you once thought to be the ideal of health and beauty. She is no longer able to walk or take a step; is only the shadow of her former self. Her haggard, careworn look speaks too plainly of her dreadful experience. The physician tells you that the operation was a wonderful success, and then adds: “We have done all we can; give her the best of care while she lasts.”
We have drawn upon our imagination to find a man who lacks judgment sufficient to allow a tinker to meddle with and destroy his watch. We have also had to fancy the quack jeweler; for in fact we could not find either of these two characters. But there was no need of doing so in the medical profession, or the patient, for the above is an everyday occurrence. The watch was a fine piece of machinery. How much more so was the woman? If all parts of the watch were in their proper place, all in proper position as when it came from the factory, it would go all right.
The woman’s skeletal frame was all right until, perhaps, not mindful of it, some portion of her spinal column became displaced by a wrench. If something is wrong with your watch you take it to a man who can fix it. He adjusts the displaced parts, and then it is all right.
Why not repair the human machine and give it the same sensible adjustment you did the watch? It is just as easy to do one as the other when you know how.
But let us return and examine the ruined watch and the remains of the woman. We find the watch corroded and gummed inside; two cogs and a wheel gone and the mainspring broken; no wonder it would not run.
Let us go to the post-mortem of the woman, or what is left of her. A half dozen wise college graduates are present with their knives, saws, etc. They proceed to open the body as they have done before. They know where, for there are the tell-tale scars giving their mute testimony of former operations, They find two ovaries, the uterus and spleen gone, and the balance of the organs so destroyed with poisons which were given her, that to examine them and take notes of a clinical lecture offers an instructive lesson to the graduating class. They wonder why she did not live without the parts that were removed.
The remainder of the watch is laid on the shelf as a reminder of your folly and ignorance. What was left of the woman you once loved is buried in the churchyard. The doctors had done all they could; they gave her the best of medical aid; they physicked, bled, blistered, and followed her with the science of medicine; they chased her life through all the mysterious windings of art; they forswore nature, shut the door in her face to keep out the fresh air, blindfolded the windows to exclude the invigorating light, refused her cold water to drink and gave her only daintily foods prepared by the chemist. Such substances irritated her internal organs, to correct the counter-irritated the external organs; they bled her until she was weak; they gave her drugs to make pure blood; they kept her alive by stimulants and let her down by sedatives. Requiescat in pace!”
Obviously watch repair is a metaphor for hysterectomy, etc. Sadly women are still being victimized the same way they were over a hundred years ago. According to experts over half the hysterectomies performed today are needless. Nothing has changed. Sadly, many surgeons still act as if their patients are suffering from “too many organs.”
If you’re looking for a path with a heart, call (303) 394-CARE (2273).
Often times realigning the spine creates enough balance in the body to allow natural healing to occur.
©2011
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