Recently, I wrote about Nephi Cottam, DC and his 1936 book The Story Of Craniopathy: A Science Of Health Its Theory And Practice. Or just Craniopathy for short.
While there has been debate on who was the first to discover cranial adjusting, Dr. Cottam or Willam G. Sutherland, DO, who published The Cranial Bowl in 1939, it was actually another chiropractor, I.N. Toftness, DC who published the first full book on cranial treatment in 1932 titled Cranial Technique.
So, with book publications we have Dr. Toftness leading the pack and Dr. Sutherland in third place. However, we have records that both Dr. Cottam and Dr. Sutherland presented their discoveries to their professions in 1929, three years before Dr. Toftness published his book. Dr. Cottam was earlier in the year with Dr. Sutherland being later in the year.
With that being said, I dug up yet another book. This one by Homer G. Beatty, DC, Anatomical Adjustive Technic, which was published in 1939 [the same year as Dr. Sutherland’s].
While this is a comprehensive book on treatments of the entire body, there is a small section devoted to adjustments of the head and face, including adjustments of the nose and nasal septum.
In this book is also the oldest reference I have dug up yet instructing the doctor how to do endonasal adjustments with a finger cot and blood pressure bulb. Yet again, like Dr. Toftness, Dr. Beatty is never mentioned in the historical lineage of this type of treatment.
I will talk more about the endonasal treatment on future posts since it evolved into one of the most powerful cranial techniques ever developed.
It’s astonishing to me how so many things get lost over the years, then are seemingly rediscovered years later.
It makes me wonder what else is out there waiting to be discovered [ or should I say re-discovered].