“Who the hell wants their neck cracked? That word has gotten us into more trouble. I don’t like my staff to use it.” Dr. Basil Snyman, a 42 year-old chiropractor, is defending his profession in the consulting room of his busy center city office, which is decorated with his own professional quality photographs. As a boy growing up in South Africa, Snyman believed sick people routinely visited chiropractors because his Dad was one and that’s who took care of him when ever he was ill. Consequently, when he joined his father’s practice in 1975, it came as something of a shock to find that the general public viewed him as a dangerous man, a quack. “ In those days most everybody thought we were an unscientific cult,” he says. “M.D.s were not allowed to consort with us. They warned people we’d paralyze them or break their necks. Fortunately for us people will go to anybody that helps them”.

The majority of Snyman’s patients arrive with back problems –more often from too much exercise rather than too little- and by the time they reach him, fed up and desperate, they’ve been through the medical mill. To their surprise-although not his-they often wind up getting help for a complaint other than the one that brought them in: a reflex problem cured when manipulation relieves nerves impinging on the esophagus; anxiety attacks stopped by easing chest pressure that’s causing shortness of breath; facial pain from TMJ decreased.

“Certainly I wouldn’t treat someone with thyroid disease or diabetes,” Snyman says. “I recognize when a patient needs a physician long before a physician recognizes somebody needs me. They haven’t a clue what I do, although some orthopedists are coming around.”

What he does after x-rays, a history and an examination, is embark on a program of spinal manipulation (sometimes with electrotherapy and ultrasound) along with diet, exercise and nutrition suggestions. Patients often leave with bottles of supplements, especially calcium. The fee for an initial consultation, examination, treatment and x-rays runs$170.00. Office visits are $35.00. “Now that Blue Cross will pay us,” he says wryly, “people are beginning to think we’re okay.”