Early Attempts to Restore Normal Autonomic Control
Let us consider the history over the last century or two of man's attempts to find the key to restoring normal autonomic regulation.  In the nineteenth century Dr. Samuel Hahnemann developed homeopathy, Dr. Andrew Still developed osteopathy, and Dr. D.D. Palmer developed chiropractic. 

The goal of homeopathy was to imprint samples of water with the energetic signature of a substance that when introduced to the body in significant quantity produces the same symptoms as those with which the patient presented. When this preparation is so diluted that there is no mathematical probability even a single molecule of the substance remaining, homeopathic theory predicts that the substance’s energetic signature remains imprinted on the carrier medium.  Homeopathic preparations carry this informational content and their ingestion theoretically triggers the body to stop the illness behavior producing the symptom for which the homeopathic remedy was intended.

Osteopathy asserted that illness results from diminished circulation caused by dysrelationship of osseous articulations that could be corrected by manipulation of joints and soft tissues.  Osteopathy lost the vision of its founder and suffered from a failure to progressively develop its therapeutic philosophy.  It became blended with allopathic medicine to the point that they have been nearly indistinguishable.  In fairness to the profession, osteopathic pioneers like John Upledger, D.O. and others have broken new ground in alternative medicine with such developments as muscle energy work, and Craniosacral Technique.  Such innovations once again distinguish the contributions of osteopathy.

In 1895, Dr. D.D. Palmer is said to have begun the science of chiropractic with the observation that a displaced thoracic vertebra seemed to have a correlation with loss of hearing in a man named Harvey Lilliard.  Palmer went on to develop the theory that such displacement of vertebrae could produce a mechanical interference to the capacity of the nervous system to send regulatory information to the tissues through spinal nerves.  He called this “quantitative interference”.  It was not long before he recognized another sort of compromise to the expression of regulatory control in the body that he called “quality expression”.  This was defined as a brain level disturbance by which the organism fails to identify and implement the "innate intelligence" that Palmer recognized informs all life processes.  The current model of education in chiropractic colleges emphasizes the mechanistic, orthopedic, physiotherapeutic model implied by the theory of “quantitative interference”.  Great work has been done over the years by many brilliant and innovative chiropractors in the field to investigate and design protocols to correct such “qualitative interference” at the CNS level; but virtually all of such work has been politically marginalized and is not taught in chiropractic colleges, with rare exception.  Ironically, the many chiropractors who recognize the importance of methods to address “qualitative interference” must study them at a post-graduate level directly from the innovators who teach them.  There is much interest among field practitioners to establish better balance in the curriculum of our chiropractic colleges in this respect.

Over the many years that have passed since chiropractic began in 1895, many different approaches have been developed by chiropractors to correct the dysregulation of the nervous system.  A tremendous richness of therapeutic approaches has unfolded, developed in every case by doctors in the field driven by the yearning to find that perfect key to restoring the full, complete, and accurate expression of our blueprint of life.  NMT: The Feinberg Techinque is in this tradition.   From the chiropractic perspective we seek the correction of these “subluxations of quality interference" to afford unadulterated expression of the innate intelligence that guides life processes.