The Doctor’s View of Musculoskeletal Medicine

Abstract

In this field, most doctors in the United Kingdom fall into one of two camps. The majority still regards musculoskeletal medicine as complementary at best, only relatively few recognising its full potential value. Of more serious import, a substantial number believe its limited therapies to be useless, a proportion of them viewing its chief therapy, vertebral manipulation, as intrinsically dangerous. I hope to persuade them that, in the light of the evidence currently available, these views are outdated. As mentioned earlier, Hippocrates used and taught vertebral manipulation, making it difficult for today’s teachers to justify its being presented as an alternative — surely with its ancient history it has to be 100% orthodox. Of course, its ancient history has little bearing on its value, but we need good reason to justify having dropped it. To date I have found none.