What happens when you go to an osteopath? Is an osteopath a real doctor? It’s easy to be confused, especially if your first reference is Wikipedia.
What happens if an osteopath cures you? Is it a real cure? What happens after an osteopathic cure? It disappears.
Osteopaths rarely claim to cure. A search for CURE on the American Osteopathic Association returns “No results found.” This should not surprise us. The American Medical Association has no definition of cure. A search for CURE of the American Medical Association website produces information about the National Cures Act – which does not contain a definition of cure. Conventional medicine, and osteopathic medicine, avoid the word cure.
But, let me tell you a true story. About 20 years ago, I began to experience numbness in my left hand. It started slowly in my little finger, and progressed slowly across my hand. I went to a conventional medical clinic, where the doctor listened, but hardly looked, and suggested a wrist brace and “perhaps a massage treatment” – he did not recommend a therapist.
I did some research and found a highly recommended massage therapist who had also studied osteopathy, acupuncture, and other treatment and healing modalities. Let’s call her Lydia.
Lydia began by examining my hand, carefully and thoroughly. She advised me that the treatment might take several visits and did not use the word cure. She massaged my hand quite aggressively and said there would be some symptoms of healing. When I left, my hand felt a bit better, but only a bit. I booked a treatment next week.
The next week, Lydia examined my hand again and started working on my forearm. I was a bit confused. She said – “the hand is not the problem. It’s farther up. We need to work up to the source.” She pushed hard at a point on my forearm, just before the elbow. It hurt, and she warned me, “If it doesn’t hurt, it won’t be much use. It will feel better after it heals.” Again, she avoided, perhaps unconsciously, the word cure.
Over the course of several weeks, Lydia worked her way up my arm, into my shoulder. She explained that she was releasing “knots”, giving me a week to heal, and then moving further. My hand was getting better – I felt cured, but she warned me that the source had not yet been found.
Then, after several weeks, she checked by hand, my forearm, upper arm, shoulder, and started working down my back. “That’s it” she exclaimed proudly. “We’ve found it”. She began to aggressively massage an area in my lower back.
As she prodded, I had a flashback. About eight months before, one beautiful summer day, I had taken an all-day bike ride. I like to ride. Normally only ride an hour or so. On this day, I rode for seven or eight hours and arrived home feeling great, and exhausted.
The next morning, I could not stand up. I crawled out of bed to get to the bathroom. I gradually recovered enough to get into the car and drive to a medical clinic. The doctor prescribed muscle a relaxant and sent me home. The muscle relaxants helped with the pain. But, I don’t like painkillers, so I took only a few. After a few days I felt better.
Muscle relaxants helped me feel better but did nothing to address the damage I had done to the tissues in my back. The damage had healed, but the healing was faulty, leaving an invisible physical blockage. Over the course of eight months, the damage caused a chain of minor, invisible blockages, which I didn’t notice, until it surfaced in my hand.
Lydia did not search for the root cause – the biking, my bike, my posture, the muscle relaxants, or failure to cure. The causes were in the past, inaccessible to cure. She searched for the present cause of my signs and symptoms, one step at a time.
She worked slowly, transforming the chain of illnesses in my hand, my forearm, my upper arm, shoulder, back, and lower back. Each transformation required some healing, and testing, sometimes repeating, to ensure it was complete. When she reached my lower back the chain ended. Lydia knew she had found the root illness, not the root cause. She asked me to book another appointment for an examination but did not expect any more problems – there were none.
Today, 20 years later, the problem has not reappeared. A diligent forceful osteopathic transformation cured it. Much gentler than any surgery, and much more effective as well.
Lydia never used the word cure. I suspect if I had suggested she cured me, she might have apologized with something like “I just enabled your body to heal.” There is no doubt is was a cure that could not have come about without her assistance.
I never went back to the original doctor, not wanting to waste his time.
What happened to the cure? It disappeared. Most cures disappear, even cancer cures. Perhaps all osteopathic cures disappear. Cured is not defined for any disease or condition cured by osteopathic manipulation. Cures occur, and they are ignored. Conventional medicine has no Theory of Cure.
There are no cure statistics for any disease. No conventional medicine cure statistics, no cure statistics for naturopathic medicine, chiropractic medicine, homeopathic medicine, Chinese Medicine. If you cure yourself, it doesn’t count.
Today, there is no medical science of cure. As a result, if you are cured by conventional medicine or osteopathic medicine, or any other medical technique – there is no way to prove cured. Cures are simply ignored.
The New Theory of Cure defines cure, cures, curing and cured. It draws clear distinctions between remission and cure. In doing so, it also defines partial cure, temporary cure, and many other aspects of cure in a comprehensive logical structure. But, don’t ask your doctor, or your osteopath about it. Doctors study diseases and treatments – and ignore cures. No doctor is trained to diagnose a cure.
to your health, tracy
