I am a chiropractor.
I was also a bit disappointed to see that the review didn't mention the authors writings on chiropractic. I'd be curious to see what he objects to, but I guess I can probably imagine it for myself. I'd hope that our musculoskeletal workings aren't being called into question. Chiropractors are generally excellent body workers, and can provide lots of help when you've injured something. Unless you're bleeding, of course, then you need to go somewhere else and not get blood on my carpet.

What I wanted to try to explain a bit of is where I think the treating-all-diseases aspect of chiropractic came from. To start, you must know that while the organs can act autonomously, the brain is generally in control of the body and one of the main ways that it exerts it's control is through the nerves that come off of the spine. So what you've got is a whole body of organs that often need some guidance on how to react to the current situation. Ideally, all flows well.

Our vertebrae in our spinal cord are designed such that rotation, lateral flexion, or extension of the joint between two vertebrae can cause an impingement of the nerve roots exiting the spine at that level. (Flexion, which in this case means tucking the chin and/or bending over forward, will lessen pressure put on the nerve roots.) And when a nerve is impinged, it affects the transmissions going down that nerve, which will change the amount of control the brain has over that organ. This lack of unity with the rest of the body could possibly be enough to cause a noticable problem.

I speculate at this point, but here goes. Sometime, somewhere, there was a patient with asthma who tried every cure they could find and eventually ended up at the chiropractor. That chiropractor did what they do, and assessed the spine using manual palpation. Finding a subluxation, the chiropractor adjusted it and the asthma disappeared. This kind of action might just lead him/her to think that they can cure asthma. And it may cause the patient to tell all their friends that their chiropractor cured their asthma. The flaw is the doctor thinking that he can therefore cure All asthma, when instead he can only cure the 0.1% ( * made-up statistic * ) of asthmas that are caused by spinal misalignment.

So apply this to every organ system. It would make me think that there is a small percentage of the population out there whose non-musculoskeletal problems could be treated by chiropractic care. Where much of my profession has gone wrong is in the execution of letting patients know this. No, we cannot treat every case of asthma, nor is it responsible doctoring to claim to be able to. I went to one of the more science-based schools, but there was still a little bit of this turn-of-the-last-century attitude of us being healers of all ills.

Supposedly though, our profession started because the founder cured a man of his deafness by a spinal adjustment. Once again, cure all deafness? No. Cure a very small percentage of deafness? Yes.

What this also does mean to me though, is that for all the people out there reading this, there are a few of you whose unrelated-seeming problems can be solved by a chiropractor. The rest of you will come out of my office feeling a bit sore, with a bit more range of motion in your neck, and with your original unrelated problem being unchanged.

I do wrestle with the implications of the word "healer", as it really is the body that's healing. All I do in nudge it in the right direction. And yes, it usually is Subtle. Except when there's a thrust and a pop and a gasp and then a smile and maybe an evil cackle on my part. That's a bit more direct.

I would much agree - I am definitely not an expert in the physical states of water molecules. That was my attempt at a layman's possible explanation of the whole thing. I don't have the science behind me to back it up. I do believe though that your explanation was a slightly-less-layman's attempt to disprove my attempt at a possible explanation.

I guess my issue is that I see us as being at the beginning of the science discovery timeline, particularly in regards to the human body. We've got all the obvious stuff figured out, like arteries contain blood and that you can't live very long without your head and we can even do sophisticated imaging of the body internals in the past 20-30 years. That's just a small part of the total knowledge that hopefully we'll eventually gleam about the body's workings. Same thing with something as simple as water. I'm pretty sure that while we do know a lot, we don't know Everything. Simply because something does not have a measurable frequency currently doesn't mean that there is nothing there to be measured - it may just indicate lacking in our detection technology.

My point is that I feel that I cannot currently claim that the theories of homeopathy are Impossible. It may not be able to be explained at our current level of scientific knowledge, but for me to simply say that it's all bunk because we aren't able to currently explain it, is foolish and short-sighted.

Lots of phenomena have been found in effects that had previously been described as 'trivial'.

And yes, I am under the impression that molecules vibrate in funny patterns, as you say. I suspect that a molecule's surrounding molecules might have some bearing on what that molecule does, and that if you put manymany of the same type of molecule together, all doing the same thing, I'd find it possible that some sort of greater pattern is formed - wave, vibration, oscillation, or possibly something unknown. Scientific speculation? Yes. Prove me wrong? Please do. Good luck. I'll be waiting with a handshake and a cold beer if you do.