Excerpts from The Official History of Chiropractic in Texas
By Dr. Walter R. Rhodes
Published by Texas Chiropractic Association, 303 International Life Building, Austin, TX 78701.As authorized by the various Boards of Directors of the Texas Chiropractic Association from 1958 to 1977, the idea first being presented to the board by E. L. Bauknight in 1958.
These excerpts are presented for educational purposes.
The legislature was the battleground for the struggle the chiropractors could not afford to lose. It is often said, half in jest, that when the legislature is in session no man, his profession or his home is safe until it adjourns. But for those who work in the healing arts, there is no jest to it – the legislature is their lifeline.
The chiropractors’ early struggles in the courts from 1906 to the 1930s were only prelude battles and served to emphasize the need for legislation as well as to lay the public relations groundwork the chiropractors would desperately need in the years to come.
Although it could hardly be comforting at the time for the McMurrains, the Shaws, the Blacks, the Stanphills, and the Myers, they probably sensed their sacrifices would somehow have good purposes. Their cases demonstrated several points, not the least of which was the utter exclusiveness of the medical practice act when administered by persons with personal axes to grind.
The medical practice act had its roots in the Republic of Texas Constitution of 1837;[1] it was repealed in 1847 by the 2nd Legislature of Texas in a general repealing law and the state was without medical practice regulations during the Mexican War and the Civil War and a short while following – a total period of twenty-six years.
A new law was structured in 1873 and in 1875 the basic law took shape. It was amended and penal provisions added in 1876 and again in 1879, to include “offer and attempt to practice” under its code.
In 1901 the legislature repealed all existing laws on medical practice and divided the field into three parts – medical, eclectic and homeopathic – which law was discarded in 1907 and replaced by the medical practice act in use today, although it has been amended in 1915, 1919, 1921, 1923, 1931, 1939, 1949, and 1951. The 1949 amendment was the one which included chiropractors under the act and set them apart with a distinct field having a separate board of examiners and specified a distinctive area of practice. The other amendments concerned optometrists, dentists and matters of concern in the various health fields.
Without sarcasm or undue editorializing it can be said that the existing law suited the mentality of the medical profession in that it allowed no competition, and tolerated no new ideas not conforming to orthodox medical thinking, in which phrase itself exists a contradiction in terms. New things could be, and usually were, condemned as quackery.
Chiropractic, for example, is still not medically acceptable in spite of mountains of evidence and multitudes of successfully treated patients, nearly every one of which told his medical doctor where he’d been to get the relief medicine wasn’t giving.
Medical doctors through the years have studied chiropractic, used it, taught it: but that fact hasn’t altered the stance of political medicine. The Texas Chiropractic College was established by an M.D. [2] as were several of the early chiropractic colleges across the U.S. Texas Chiropractic College’s first graduate was an M.D.[3] as was the first graduate of the Palmer School. Dr. David Hestand and Dr. P. D. Brown, discussed elsewhere, were as outstanding examples of medical men of investigative minds who were more reasonable. The Texas Chiropractic College has frequently had men from the medical profession in its student number since 1908.
Dr. H. W. Watkins also counts some of his relatives, an aunt and uncle, among Texas’ pioneers in both medicine and chiropractic. His aunt, Mable Baldwin, M. D., was one of the first female medical doctors in Texas. She practiced for number of years – and was approaching her old maid years – before meeting Charley Kenney, a Texas Rancher who had been treated successfully by an unknown chiropractor. Mable and Charley married and both enrolled in the Palmer Chiropractic College, graduating about 1913 and settling in the Austin Area.
People are often quick to feel that the medical profession and their related state and national organizations are synonymous with research, new ideas, progress in medicine and progressive social legislation. They like to feel that their medical doctors have an eager desire to contribute to the public good. But truth does not reside in such feelings and the persecution of the early chiropractors helped the public at large to understand it – and they, the public, had to understand it before the unrelenting and bitter opposition of the medical powers could be finally ignored by the majority of legislators who, in 1943, and again in 1949, created a licensing act for chiropractors.
It finally dawned on the legislators that the medical opposition was mistaken in some of their claims, exaggerated others and ignored evidence they did not want to see; but every move was in their self-interest, not the public’s. Medicare, Medicaid, national health insurance and other progressive Ideas have since become realities and the legislators as well as the public can still observe the same medical response and compare it to the public needs in those issues also. It was the legislature itself which finally did what it was empowered to do” ignore the medical lobbyists’ pleas and somehow, in a collective wisdom, act in the best interests of the citizens of Texas.
But the legislators didn’t get all their wisdom in one session. The first chiropractic bill was offered in 1917 by Dr. C. W. Billings and it almost did the job. The legislative program for 1917 was firmly in the minds of the men involved when the Texas State Chiropractic Association was formed in 1916 with 8 charter members – who were quickly joined by 19 more.* The twenty-seven doctors held the first annual TSCA convention at the St. Anthony Hotel in San Antonio in the fall of 1916 and laid plans for the legislative program of 1917. They raised a war chest of $3,500.00 [nearly $80,000 in 2015 dollars. Note: $3500 from 27 people averages to just under $130 per person. $130 in 1916 is equivalent to just under $3000 in 2015 dollars.], appointed Dr. C. W. Billings as chairman of the legislative committee, and he persuaded Representative J. W. Parks of Dallas County to introduce the first chiropractic licensing bill into the House of Representatives where it promptly passed the house by a vote of 82 to 57 – and that came to the attention of the medical interests with much vigor.
The bill failed to overcome resistance in the Senate and was defeated. The May, 1917, issue of the Universal Chiropractic Association Bulletin notes that the chiropractic bill in Texas was defeated, and so was the optometrists’ bill rejected in the same session.
The next bill to be introduced was in 1923 by Dr. Charles Lemly and it was soon buried deep in the inner parts of the Public health Committee where it suffocated without making any waves except in the chiropractic profession where it was viewed a the portent of the future.
Dr. Billings, chairman of the 1917 legislative committee of TSCA began immediately to reap the harvest of the Palmer-Carver personality problems. Years later he would insist that Texas could have had a licensing law much sooner had it not been for the “silly, hair-splitting, Gerrymandering Geezers” who kept the profession from presenting a united front to the legislature.
Meanwhile, Dr. C. M. Rosser, Sr., very active in the medical organizations, also practiced what he preached, personally going after Dr. S. T. McMurrain of Dallas in 1926, when he approached a patient the two of them had shared, Mr. Finley. Mosser persuaded him to sign a complaint in spite of Finley’s personal friendship with McMurrain.
State Senator Terrell of the law firm of Greenwood and Terrell was hired as the defense attorney. The courtroom was crowded with medical doctors and chiropractors from near and far and their presence was dominating the affair until Terrell subpoenaed as witnesses all the medical doctors he could identify – which meant they could no longer be present in the spectator section of the courtroom, and which also meant that the chiropractors did any dominating that was done for the balance of the trial which ran a full week.
The case ended in a hung jury and was never retried.
The 1927 convention of the Texas Medical Association dedicated a large part of its time to the “concerns of the association with strengthening the State Health Department and with controlling the increasingly powerful chiropractors."
The concern had been growing for some time. In 1927 the Dallas County Medical Society supported the creation of a new court, which they felt could better handle all the “practicing medicine without a license” charges, and they went after the chiropractors again, and that meant Dr. S. T. McMurrain. Mr. Nolan Williams, attorney, was elected judge of the court.
Nathaniel Jacks, a local attorney, was hired to defend Dr. McMurrain in this court, but McMurrain was convicted in spite of all efforts. He was fined and sent to jail for one day – complete with candy, flowers and four reporters from local papers. When he returned to his office late in the day, after release from jail, he flipped the lights on and discovered the place crowded with tearful patients who presented him with a loving cup and much encouragement – a fact the medical history of Texas duly records as a pitiful example of misplaced sentiment.
Judge Williams, in later months, came to Dr. McMurrain as a patient to be treated for acute torticollis – after first agreeing to let bygones be bygones – and on the further basis that they were brother Shriners.
Bill McCall, who later was defeated in the election for Governor by W. Lee (Pappy) O’Daniel, was the prosecuting attorney. He was later elected attorney general of Texas.
McCall and McMurrain were, at the time of the trial, members of the same Sunday School Class in Cliff Temple Baptist Church and were both Shriners and appeared together socially at many of the same civic functions. McCall was pressured by the medical society but had a personal distaste for that particular job of prosecution. He refused, however, to apply the “Injunction Law” until another conviction was obtained. McMurrain was tried one more time after that but was successfully defended by his attorney, Lewis Wilson. After that acquittal he was never arrested or tried again.
In 1928 the Executive Committee of the Texas Medical Association reported with alarm to the membership that a bill had been introduced into the legislature appropriating $2,000.00 to be used for employing a chiropractor in the San Antonio Hospital for the Insane.
The bill was defeated but it received 24 favorable votes.
Calling it a “new aspect of the chiropractic threat” the council was “tortured by the thought of chiropractors working on those incompetent to choose physicians."
The council went on that day to discuss the use of the radio to educate the public but warned that the radio was “as dangerous as it was powerful,” noting that the Palmer Chiropractic College in Iowa owned and operated its own station, WOC, and that arch-enemy chiropractor, H. C. Allison of Ft. Worth owned radio station KFJZ.
Addresses had been made in previous years, about 1923, to the assembled medical doctors by Drs. W. B. Thorning, T. J. Crowe, W. B. Russ, and A. C. Scott. Dr. Russ’s was so alarming and effective that he was asked to repeat it to another audience.
All the speakers dealt with the responsibility the medical profession had with the public. Very quickly afterwards the Council on Education and Public Instruction passed a resolution calling for a publicity campaign regarding the practice of medicine, the status of cults and quacks, the effect of quackery on the public health, and other worthy goals.
A voluntary contribution of $10.00 [about $135 in 2015 dollars] from each Texas Medical Association member was requested to pay for the campaign. By February, 1924, about one-fourth of the membership had responded with their donations.
Perhaps the most flagrant prostitution of Christianity since the crusades occurred in Ft. Worth when twelve prominent physicians, including Dr. Joe Becton, mounted the pulpit to make “addresses on public health.” Timed to coincide with the opening of the legislative session in Austin they were open attacks on chiropractic and were never claimed to be anything else. This use of churches and the pulpit was a tactic the History of Medicine in Texas calls, “a method of promoting good public relations that had been in use for several years."
Doctors were also urged to educate, in their offices, their individual patients on the dangers of chiropractic. That, at least, is honest even if mistaken, but to use the guise of Christianity as a public relations gimmick remains the rankest of hypocrisy.
This period from 1925 to 1929 saw chiropractors come under increasingly heavy attack. The medical attitude shifted from “educating the public” to vigorously enforcing the medical practice act. One issue of their official publication reported the arrest or conviction of seven chiropractors and, in Dallas, ten in one day were indicted.
Time went on. Arrests and trials. Some convicted, some acquitted. More arrests and trials. Efforts in the legislature were slowly making headway. Recognition was becoming more than just a trickle. The public was slowly, ever slowly, warming to chiropractors when, like a bombshell, totally unexpectedly, one of the greatest things that ever happened for chiropractors fell into place: Judge E. B. Simmons.
With him, an era had begun. He was hired on April 1, 1938, as the Texas State Chiropractic Association’s defense lawyer and he never lost a case in Texas. Chiropractors charged with practicing medicine without a license won acquittals all over the state – and won and won and won.
The story of Judge E. B. Simmons began one day in 1937 when Dr. James R. Drain, the early enthusiasm and voice of the Texas Chiropractic College, was called to testify as an expert witness. He asked Simmons, a San Antonio Lawyer, to go with him to the trial of Dr. A. E. Brammer of Bandera, charged with 23 counts of practicing medicine without a license.
Drain, answering Simmons' questions about the profession and its problems, began the process of filling Simmons with the desire to help. Simmons always gave Drain credit for first interesting him in chiropractic.
Dr. R. S. Marlow was also influential in the early indoctrination of Simmons – and others have claimed the privilege. Perhaps if Simmons had lost a few cases we’d know with more accuracy his early acquaintances but, as it is, everyone practicing in Texas at the time wants a share of the credit for his begin discovered.
Dr. F. L. Charlton of Austin, president of Texas State Chiropractic Association, was presiding over the board of directors when Simmons was hired as head of the defense department. The same men, just a little earlier at the State Convention of 1937 in Galveston, had hired E. L. Bauknight as executive secretary of Texas State Chiropractic Association at the urgings of Dr. H. H. Kennedy of Longview.
The employment of these two men effectively revolutionized the status of chiropractic in Texas. Judge Simmons made it impractical to charge chiropractors with practicing medicine without a license and taking them to court, and Bauknight’s public relations soon began to create positive conditions in the legislative halls. Much progress began on every front.
These two men, both loved by chiropractors everywhere, had cool personal relationships develop between them, however, and they never became close personal friends. Speaking nearly forty years later, Elizabeth Bauknight suggested that their fundamental personality traits were the probable reasons for the coolness.
Judge Simmons, she relates, was emotional, fiery, persuasive and little less than an absolute genius as a trial lawyer when performing in front of a jury. She called him a consummate actor who could play the jury’s emotional strings as eloquently as an expert violinist could persuade music from that other difficult instrument. She said he could weep, offer impassioned pleas and make demands on the jury as few other trial lawyers ever could.
Everyone who ever saw Judge Simmons work, friend and foe alike, agrees on his abilities and expresses nothing but admiration for his expertise in his chosen field. Simmons was supposed to have sworn on his mother’s deathbed always to be a defender of the underdog and the downtrodden. The incident prompting this oath isn’t known but, if true, he always kept his promise.
Emmett L. Bauknight, however, wasn’t like that at all. He was a quiet man, skilled in personal relationships; and as an organizer; and as an administrator. His thinking was precise, logical and tended to cleave through to the heart of the matter under consideration.
The chiropractors were bitterly divided on issues from time to time such as their future scope of practice, certain definitions of key words and various political ideas and there was a deep and long-lasting division with a small but exceedingly vocal minority group of Chiropractors. And this minority segment of the profession was always present at all affairs affecting legislation.
It was Emmett Bauknight who usually umpired these meetings and who caused everyone to leave the conference with a course of action which was satisfactory to all the combatants.
This divisiveness was extremely hurtful to the chiropractic cause on many occasions because legislators who might otherwise have aided them readily became so confused over the internal bickering of chiropractors that they cast negative votes until the chiropractors themselves could agree on what they wanted.
Few men were ever known to have E. L. Bauknight’s catalytic ability to take squabbling enemies and convert them to agreeing enemies before the meeting ended.
He kept prima donna participants placated, civil and gentlemanly – and on track – through delicate discussions and negotiations. That was probably the man’s particular genius.
To understand the full impact of E. L. Bauknight it is necessary to understand his background. He was of German extraction, which originally earned him the nickname of “Square Headed Dutchman,” a description shortened to “Square” when he unsuccessfully ran for two public offices in Travis County on the campaign slogan, “Elect Square Bauknight for a Square Deal."
But it was his reputation for square dealings that solidified the name among his friends. He was appointed county attorney for Travis County for one term, and maintained a lifelong association with the Shriners, becoming well known for work in that organization.
Bauknight was first associated in the chiropractic profession, as remembered by Elizabeth, his widow, by Dr.s Harvey Watkins and H. H. Kennedy. They discussed the needs for a chiropractic association and tighter organization with Bauknight on many occasions during late night sessions.
Shortly afterwards Dr. F. L. Charlton became prominent in these discussions and soon thereafter Square attended a succession of meetings in Houston and San Antonio.
E. B. Simmons and E. L. Bauknight were guarded friends in a common cause for chiropractic. Bauknight felt that Simmons and he were at odds in the long run. Simmons’ business was defending chiropractors in court actions where they were charged with practicing medicine without a license. Simmons, therefore, was felt by Bauknight not to be overly anxious to have the chiropractors get a successful chiropractic bill through the State legislature, a move which would put Simmons out of a job. Bauknight, contrariwise, was committed totally to that very thing; a licensing bill, and the attendant safety, security, freedom from harassment and the ultimate dignity and financial security the licensing act would have on the chiropractic profession. Bauknight tirelessly aimed at upgrading the chiropractic image and improving the profession’s educational requirements and facilities.
Bauknight was legal counsel and secretary to the Texas Board of Chiropractic Examiners after its creation in 1949 and, simultaneously, the executive secretary of the Texas State Chiropractic Association, the post he had held since 1937. He held both positions until his death January 19, 1966.
Simmons kept the chiropractors safe for the moment: Bauknight prepared them to move into professional maturity.
Mrs. Ophelia Elliott was secretary to Bauknight and continued as secretary to the executive directors of Texas State Chiropractic Association for a 27 year span, ending in 1969.
Following Bauknight’s death Mr. Robert Barling and Mr. Ed McCluskey were hired as full time executive directors, each for a short time. Dr. Charles E. Walker of Austin was asked to aid them, to serve before and after their hiring and to generally supervise the Austin office.
On January 20, 1970, Dr. John Muilenburg, Dr. Roy Beller, and Dr. H. L. Rudeseal, the executive officers of Texas State Chiropractic Association hired Dr. Walker as the executive director, expecting him to dedicate about two hours per day until a new permanent director could be found. The job quickly escalated into a 24-hour-per-day proposition and the officers eventually quit looking for another man. Dr. Walker had won the job, however reluctant he may have initially been, and continued in that post until November, 1977.
He had the job of arranging annual, out-of-country educational seminars, overseeing convention negotiations and related activities, maintaining liaison and correspondence with myriad organizations and, generally speaking, keeping Texas State Chiropractic Association members happy.
Mr. Ray Lemmon was hired in 1975 as the TSCA’s first full time lobbyist and worked within the organization on political matters also until November 1977.
During the 1973 legislative year and the year following when the proposed Texas Constitutional Revision was being prepared for submission to Texas voters, Dr. Walker was the only registered TSCA lobbyist. It was during the negotiations over issues in the proposed new Texas Constitution that attorney general John Hill was asked about the status of the 1949 licensing law. He said, in his opinion it was constitutional.
Thus it was Dr. Charles E. Walker who held the executive director’s post in the first years of professional maturity, and he gave a much needed stability to that job in service to the profession in Texas.
*Those charter members as remembered by Dr. Joe Busby were: Dr. Charles Lemly, Waco’ Dr. B. F. Gurden, San Antonio; Dr. W. C. Wishert, Temple; Dr. Lon Herrington, San Antonio; Dr. J. A. Markwell, Dallas; Dr. Ralph Guy, Dallas; Dr. C. W. A. Maier, Hillsboro; and Dr. Richardson of Austin. Dr. S. T. McMurrain remembers the make-up of the charter members a bit differently. He lists: Dr. Charles Lemly, Dr. R. E. Mathis, Dr. C. W. Billings, Dr. B.F. and Flora Gurden, and Dr. Lon Herrington and his wife, also a chiropractor.
In McMurrains’ account he starts the process a year earlier, 1915. We have confirmation from a separate source that the first TSCA state officers were elected in 1916 and they were Dr. M. B. McCoy, President; Dr. George S. Cotton, Vice-president; and Dr. H. R. Tuckey, Secretary.
Editor’s Notes:
- It was not in the Constitution, it was a medical practice act authored by Anson Jones in 1837.
- This statement is incorrect. Stone was an M.T., not an M.D.
- This statement is incorrect. Luttrell has not been identified as an M.D., but in 1913 advertises himself as a “chiro-practor".
