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 1917-1918 influenza epidemic swept silently across the world bringing death and fear to homes in every land. Disease and pestilence, especially the epidemics, are little understood even now and many of the factors that spread them are still mysterious shadows, but in 1917-1918 almost nothing was known about prevention, protection, treatment or cure of influenza. The whole world stood at its mercy, or lack of it.
But out of that particular epidemic, the young science of chiropractic grew into a new measure of safety. While many struggles would lie ahead, this successful passage of the profession into early maturity assured its immediate survival and made the eventual outcome of chiropractic a matter for optimism. If there had been any lack of enthusiasm among the doctors of chiropractic, or a depleting of the sources of students then the epidemic took care of them too.
These chiropractic survivors of the flu epidemic were sure, assured, determined, and ready to fight any battle that came up. The effect of the epidemic becomes evident in interviews made with old-timers practicing in those years. The refrain comes repeatedly, “I was about to go out of business when the flu epidemic came – but when it was over, I was firmly established in practice.” Why?
The answer is reasonably simple. Chiropractors got fantastic results from influenza patients while those under medical care died like flies all around. We are indebted to Dr. Willard Carver for gathering general statistics applicable to the United States as a whole and those from Oklahoma in particular. And these statistics reflect a most amazing, almost miraculous state of affairs. The medical profession was practically helpless with the flu victims but chiropractors seemed able to do no wrong.
Dr. Carver said, “Total figures for the entire nation are not available, but it was estimated that 400,000 deaths resulted from influenza during 1918 and life insurance companies paid death losses amounting to more than a hundred million dollars.
In Davenport, Iowa, 50 medical doctors treated 4,953 cases, with 274 deaths. In the same city, 150 chiropractors including students and faculty of the Palmer School of Chiropractic, treated 1,635 cases with only one death.
In the state of Iowa, medical doctors treated 93,590 patients, with 6,116 – a loss of one patient out of every 15.
In the same state, excluding Davenport, 4,735 patients were treated by chiropractors with a loss of only 6 cases – a loss of one patient out of every 789.
National figures show that 1,142 chiropractors treated 46,394 patients for influenza during 1918, with a loss of 54 patients – one out of every 886.
Reports show that in New York City, during the influenza epidemic of 1918, out of every 10,000 cases medically treated, 950 died; and in every 10,000 pneumonia cases medically treated 6,400 died. The figures are exact, for in that city these are reportable diseases.
In the same epidemic, under drugless methods, only 25 patients died of influenza out of every 10,000 cases; and only 100 patients died of pneumonia out of every 10,000 cases. This comparison is made more striking by the following table: –
INFLUENZA
| Cases | Deaths | |
| Under medical methods | 10,000 | 950 |
| Under drugless methods | 10,000 | 25 |
PNEUMONIA
| CASES | DEATHS | |
| Under medical methods | 10,000 | 6,400 |
| Under drugless methods | 10,000 | 100 |
In the same epidemic reports show that chiropractors in Oklahoma treated 3,490 cases of influenza with only 7 deaths. But the best part of this is, in Oklahoma there is a clear record showing that chiropractors were called in 233 cases where medical doctors had cared for the patients, and finally gave them up as lost. The chiropractors saved all these lost cases but 25.
Statistics alone, however, don’t put in that little human element needed to spark the material properly. Dr. S. T. McMurrain had a makeshift table installed in the influenza ward in Base Hospital No. 84 unit stationed in Perigee, in Southwestern France, about 85 kilometers from Bordeaux. The medical office in charge sent all influenza patients in for chiropractic adjustments from Dr. McMurrain for the several months the epidemic raged in that area.
Lt. Col. McNaughton, the detachment commander, was so impressed he requested to have Dr. McMurrain commissioned in the Sanitary Corps but, upon McNaughton’s transfer, the next commander didn’t look upon the commission request kindly and it was squashed without fanfare.
Dr. Paul Myers of Wichita Falls was pressed into service by the County Health Officer and authorized to write prescriptions for the duration of the epidemic there – but Dr. Myers said he never wrote any, getting better results without medication.
Dr. Helen B. Mason who was to win the Keeler Plaque as Chiropractor of the year in 1957, relates that her early experiences with influenza was a major factor in her becoming a chiropractor. She says, “During the flu epidemic of 1917 when so many under medical care were dying, one of my sisters became ill. My oldest sister, who had just graduated from the Hunter Chiropractic College in Springfield, Missouri, took care of her. However to verify her diagnosis that it was flu, she had Dr. L. S. Hunter, President of the College, see her. With his adjustment, together with four or five that my sister gave her, she was sick only three days. On the fourth day, under protest from my sister, she walked seven blocks to town and back. She became well so soon that I almost refused to believe that she had the flu.
Later my son, when only a year old, became very ill with bronchitis. My husband and I took him to several medical specialists without any worthwhile results. We called a chiropractor, as a last resort, and were amazed at the rapidity of his recovery. We discussed this amazing cure at length and came to the decision that if chiropractic could do as much for the health of other individuals as it had done for our son we wanted to become chiropractors."
Dr. F. L. Charlton was another man led by the flu into chiropractic. It came about this way according to him, “… you will remember that was during World War I and the great flu epidemic was raging in 1918. People were dying on all sides of us but Dr.s R. S. Marlow and Lon Herrington (of San Antonio) had ads in the paper, stating they had not lost a patient. All this time Dr. Marlow was encouraging me to study chiropractic and he kept me posted on many of his spectral recoveries. Mrs. Charlton and I were thoroughly sold on studying chiropractic but we did not have the cash to finance it. When the Armistice was signed and the war was ended, we had great hopes of going to Davenport.” He later did.
And Dr. M. L. Stanphill recounts his experiences. “I had quite a bit of practice in 1918 when the flu broke out. I stayed (in Van Alstyne) until the flu was over and had the greatest success, taking many cases that had been given up and restoring them back to health. During the flu we didn’t have the automobile. I went horseback and drove a buggy day and night. I stayed overnight when the patients were real bad. When the rain and snow came I just stayed it out. There wasn’t a member of my family that had the flu."
Then when he came to Denison he said, “I had a lot of trouble with pneumonia when I first came. I once again took all the cases that had been given up. C. R. Crabetree, who lived about 18 miles west of Denison, had double pneumonia and I went and stayed all night with him and until he came to the next morning. He is still living today. That gave me a boost on the west side of town."
And when interviews of the old-timers are made it is evident that each still vividly remembers the 1917-1918 influenza epidemic. We now know about 20 million persons around the world died of the flu with about 500,000 Americans among that number. But most chiropractors and their patients were miraculously spared and we repeatedly hear about those decisions to become a chiropractor after a remarkable recovery or when a close family member given up for dead suddenly came back to vibrant health.
Some of these men and women were to become the major characters thrust upon the profession’s state in the 20s and 30s and they had the courage, the background and the conviction to withstand all that would shortly be thrown against them.
The publicity and reputation of such effectiveness in handling flu cases also brought new patients and much acclaim from people who knew nothing of chiropractic before 1918.
But there had to be another great factor in chiropractic survival in the early years. Enthusiasm by itself wasn’t enough, and even adding deep convictions and willingness to suffer, they still wouldn’t let the fledging profession really get off the ground. somebody had to protect it from its attacking enemies.
There were two men to whom it fell, by the guidance of providence, to be there when chiropractic needed protection in the courts and legislatures. Chiropractors of today hardly recognize the names – in truth may never have heard of the gentlemen. But the old pioneers revered them and almost called them blessed because their services were called upon only when the troubles were truly deep.
One was Mr. Tom Morris, former governor of the State of Wisconsin, who was hired as chief defense counsel for the old Universal Chiropractic Association, the organization designed by Dr. B. J. Palmer to protect early chiropractors from the practicing medicine without a license charge.
The Universal Chiropractic Association had its beginnings in 1906 when a Dr. Shegataro Morikobu of LaCrosse, Wisconsin, was arrested. Dr. B. J. Palmer and Lee Edwards went to assist. They engaged Mr. Tom Morris who was then the president of Wisconsin’s senate and he, with the aid of attorney Fred Hartwell, successfully defended the man, gaining a unanimous decision from the jurors.
The Universal Chiropractic Association soon became the best known of several existing defense organization, and one of the most effective, chiefly because of the talent of Tom Morris.
He started almost from scratch. There was little chiropractic history; no chiropractic backlog of court cases; no chiropractic legislation; no effective arguments for the defense of chiropractic; and nothing else, not even funny but pointed remarks such as was later used in a Kansas legislative battle when a Catholic priest and Methodist bishop were present at a hearing which was trying to determine whether or not to included medical doctors on the proposed chiropractic licensing board.
On legislator turned to the Methodist bishop, whose name was Wise, and asked him, “If the Wise Bishop would be willing to take his ordination examination under the Holy Father?"
The point was well made amid much laughter.
Dr. Paul Myers of Wichita Falls won his case of November 1920, when Tom Morris represented him, but lost the one from which Morris was absent in January 1921, when the judge refused to allow more postponements. It was Tom Morris who successfully defended Dr. Clyde Keeler of Dallas when chips were flying. And it was the Universal Chiropractic Association that defended Dr. M. B. McCoy in all his court trials. Tom Morris was active in Texas and the mid-west, east and the southwest. He left a broad trail.
It somehow seems important to point out that Dr. J. R. Drain, who so deftly appeared as an expert witness in so many trials, Judge E. B. Simmons, the able defense attorney who rose to such heights in Texas, and Dr. Rudy Warner, who also testified at many Texas’ doctors trials, and the others in Texas had the roots and the foundation left by Tom Morris to build upon.
Morris must have really been something to watch work. The old-timers speak of him almost in awe. Dr. M. L. Stanphill said, ‘He was awfully tough on prosecutors – tore them up in court.” Tom Morris worked with the Universal Chiropractic association and was always closely affiliated with the Palmer Chiropractic College.
Another focus of chiropractic thought and legal battles centered in Oklahoma City at the Carver Chiropractic College and a man there who was as fully responsible as Morris in bringing the early body of common law weight to bear in behalf of chiropractic.
He was Arkansas born Judge George S. Evans who was recommended as counsel to troubled Arkansas chiropractors by Dr. Willard Carver, who had his hands full several times over and could not act as defense counsel with any regularity. Evans was already a chiropractic patient at the time and thoroughly sold on its merits because it was he who had asked Dr. J. C. Glover to come to Greenwood, Arkansas, to practice and to bring all the chiropractors with him that he could encourage to come to Arkansas. Several came, among them Dr. Earnest Gallagher on the 1st of September, 1911, who was promptly charged with practicing medicine without a license on September 6th. Prosecutors had already selected his as a case that was to prelude wholesale arrests of chiropractors if successfully prosecuted.
Judge Evans was his defense counsel, as he was to nearly all the Arkansas chiropractors. Evans defended him in the court of Hon. Judge Jep Evans, George’s brother, who had an excellent judicial reputation, having very few of his cases reversed upon appeal to higher courts. Dr. Gallagher and Judge Evans were clear winners, but as might be certainly expected under the circumstances, the State appealed the verdict to the Sate Supreme Court where the victory was upheld.
“The Gallagher case,” writes Dr. Willard Carver, “is a leading one in the United States and has been cited and approved by at least eleven states."
Evans then became the counsel sought by most Carver Chiropractic College graduates wherever they went and he rarely ever lost a trial, being bother by instinct and ability a defendant’s lawyer.
About the last thing Evans did in Arkansas was to take a proposed legislative bill mailed to him by Dr Willard Carver and submit it, in early 1915, to the Arkansas legislature, then officially in session in Little Rock. He helped to defeat more than forty proposed amendments to it and secured its word for word passage. It was sent to the governor and signed and became the first chiropractic law to go into effect and full operation anywhere in the world. The Kansas statute was the first one passed, and North Dakota was second but the Arkansas law went into effect and its board of examiners became fully functional before those of any other state.
Nine years earlier, in a whoops move, Dr. Dan Reisland of Minnesota employed a local lawyer to write a chiropractic licensing bill and asked his district’s legislator to introduce it, which he did. The bill passed both houses of the legislature and went to the governor’s desk for signature.
However, the governor vetoed it instead. Nonetheless it becomes the very first chiropractic law introduced into any state – early 1906, the exact date is not known. And, whoops, it almost was the first law to take effect.
North Dakota, incidentally, had the privilege of issuing the first chiropractic license in the world, to Dr. Roy Wood of Minot, N.D., in April, 1915. Kansas was to begin issuing licenses in May 1915; Arkansas began in June, 1915.
Dr. Willard Carver, Dr. B. J. Palmer, Judge George Evans and Mr. Tom Morris were probably the most influential men in early legislative efforts in behalf of chiropractic and Dr. Carver’s role has never been appreciated as much as it perhaps ought to be. He personally wrote the Arkansas and Oklahoma laws and they were passed almost verbatim. He was one of a number of leaders in Kansas, North Dakota, Iowa, and other states and had a heroic role in writing and arguing for the passage of their laws.
Dr. B. J. Palmer was much more the showman – especially effective in the courtroom trials – and tended to overshadow Carver in later years but Palmer was not a well educated man and had no legal training at all. Palmer didn’t claim to be, relying on Tom Morris and Fred Hartwell for legal chores. Carver, to the contrary, had been a lawyer for many years and also knew the intricacies of chiropractic and the weaknesses of medicine – which made him one of the most valuable men in the profession.
Carver called Judge Evans the father of chiropractic jurisprudence. Evans later went to the Carver College, studied and received the DC degree. He was eventually appointed as legal counsel to the associations of eleven states, including Oklahoma, Kansas, and Arkansas. He died September 8, 1954, at the age of 89.
Hindsight, therefore, allows us to appreciate more fully the work of Tom Morris and Judge George S. Evans and they, quite properly, can be called the first survival factor for chiropractic: they were the legal and legislative salvation. But the fabulous success of chiropractic in combatting the 1917-1918 influenza outbreak was the public relations breakthrough that can certainly be called the second great survival factor. Better acceptance by the public followed and more patients meant financial safety for practicing chiropractors. Dedicated chiropractors came into the profession in increasing numbers and they had a sure sense of certainly, heady conviction, and a great willingness to fight for the cause.
There was to come one other factor before professional survival was a reality and it also came about on the heels of human tragedy: World War II and its resulting G. I. Bill. The sudden influx of students into the financially strapped chiropractic colleges was much like giving water to a thirsty desert traveler.
Added students meant more money, better standards, upgraded equipment, higher teacher standards, more and better buildings and everything else a college could want.
It didn’t solve all the problems, of course, and even added some new ones, but live, healthy colleges can solve problems so much better than sick or dying ones. The progress began and it has not slowed since.