Chiropractic

Bacteriology was widely introduced into chiropractic curricula during the 1920s. “Rather than wholeheartedly accepting the germ theory of disease, however, chiropractors accepted the association between pathogenic bacteria and disease but denied a causal relationship. Instead, they pointed to differences in susceptibility as the central issue in infectious diseases. They used their observational approach to note that not every person exposed to pathogenic bacteria became ill and argued that the difference between those who became sick and those who remained well was the presence or absence of vertebral subluxations. Thus bacteriology could help confirm a diagnosis without explaining the disease” (S. Martin, 218).