Chiropractic: A Profession at the Crossroads of Mainstream and Alternative Medicine

Chiropractic is a large and well-established health care profession in the United States. In this overview, we briefly examine the development of chiropractic from humble and contentious begin-nings to its current state at the crossroads of alternative and mainstream medicine. Chiropractic has taken on many of the attributes of an established profession, improving its educational and licensing systems and substantially increasing its market share in the past two decades. The public increasingly uses chi-ropractic largely for spinal pain syndromes and appears to be highly satisfied with the results. Of all the so-called alternative professions, chiropractic has made the largest inroads into private and public health care financing systems and is increasingly viewed as an effective specialty by many in the medical profes-sion. Much of the positive evolution of chiropractic can be as-cribed to a quarter century–long research effort focused on th