In the U.S., 36 states allow boards of chiropractors to pass on the professional qualifications of fellow spinal manipuulators. But Ohio is not one of them. There, a chiropractor must get his permit from a medical board of orthodox M.D.s. Chiropractor Herber Ross Reaver considered this absurd. Said he : "It's like having Catholic priests license Methodist ministers. We recognize that both are prescribing a way to heaven, but why should one tell the other what to prescribe?"
Reaver set out to change the state law. He began to practice, without a permit, in a Cincinnati suburb. He got plenty of patients,...