From Source to Periphery: Philosophical Foundations of Chiropractic

From Source to Periphery

Philosophical Foundations of Chiropractic

A Contemporary Study of R. W. Stephenson's Chiropractic Textbook (1927)

"Poor chiropractors are apt to substitute machinery for knowledge." — R. W. Stephenson, 1927

Every clinician works from a philosophy, whether it is stated or not. Behind each decision at the treatment table lie assumptions about what the body is, how it keeps itself well, what goes wrong with it, and what the hands can and cannot do. A clinician who has examined those assumptions can explain them, test them against what happens to patients, and change them when they fail.

In 1927 Ralph W. Stephenson, a teacher at the Palmer School of Chiropractic, published the Chiropractic Textbook. It was one of the school's "Green Books," and it was the first attempt to set out the whole of chiropractic philosophy as an organised system. B. J. Palmer called it "by far the best, not excepting my own." Stephenson arranged its ideas as thirty-three numbered principles, from the Major Premise to the Law of Demand and Supply. At its centre is a thirty-one-step cycle by which control passes from the brain, the Source, to every tissue at the Periphery, and back again. For a century the book has been the reference point for classical chiropractic thought.

This contemporary study follows Stephenson's text from beginning to end. It sets out his arguments in his own words, then examines them against a century of physiology, neuroscience and clinical research. Some of his ideas have been confirmed, sometimes strikingly. His telephone analogy describes sensory transduction. His "bank account" of the tissues anticipates allostatic load. His principle that "no function can be normal if it never varies" is confirmed by modern research on physiological variability. Other ideas survive in reformed form. The subluxation is understood here, as Stephenson himself described it, as crowding of the contents of the intervertebral foramen rather than bone pinching nerve. The meric principle survives as the real segmental organisation of the body's nerve supply. Still others must be set aside, and the book explains why.

Inside you will find:

• 34 chapters in six parts, following Stephenson's own sequence from the Introduction to the Senior Text, Etiology and the Thesis
• In every chapter: learning objectives, Stephenson's argument, contemporary understanding, a "From 1927 to Today" comparison table, clinical reasoning for the manual clinician, a case for discussion, key points and review questions
• All thirty-three principles in full, with an appendix restating each one for present-day practice
• Redrawn figures of the Normal Complete Cycle, the Universal Diagram, the vertemere cycle and the intervertebral foramen
• A glossary of Stephenson's special terms, a selected bibliography and an index
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This book is written for students and practitioners of chiropractic, osteopathic manual therapy and related professions. It treats the clinician's role not as treating or curing disease, but as reducing what interferes with the body's own capacity to regulate and repair itself, and as recognising when that capacity is failing and referral is needed.

From Source to Periphery is the fifth volume of the Clinical Reasoning Series from PCC PRESS. It follows The Roots of Clinical Reasoning, A Little World Within, The Body Itself and More Than Machinery.