Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Not That Kind of Chiropractor

Maybe it's just me, but in my experience chiropractors do things like spinal adjustments. I have yet to meet one who performed exorcisms, but apparently that's because I don't live in Iowa. A chiropractor there recently lost his license for performing exorcisms on patients and treating them in exchange for sex. I suppose it's good work if you can get it. Lately it seems like everyone is getting in on the exorcism game, from the Roman Catholic Church declaring war on sexy vampires and Bob Larsen's Teen Exorcist Squad keeping busy.

An Iowa chiropractor is out of business after authorities busted him for performing exorcisms and treating patients in exchange for sex.

Charles Manuel surrendered his license but could apply to get it back in 10 years as part of a settlement reached with the Iowa Board of Chiropractors reached in March.

The board had accused the southern Iowa-based chiropractor of "unethical conduct…engaging in practice harmful or detrimental to the public," and "practicing outside the scope of the profession" in the settlement obtained on April 15 by The Des Moines Register.

Yeah, that sounds about right. I have no idea what chiropractic and exorcism have to do with each other, which brings to mind two distinct possibilities. Either Manuel is a fraud and charged people for performing some sort of ritual he knew was bogus, or he believed in what he was doing but decided that it was easy enough that it required little training.

Actually, a lot of the training that exorcists get in the Roman Catholic Church, for example, has nothing to do with the ritual itself, but rather has to do with discerning an actual spirit attack from mental illness or a myriad of other problems that can be addressed by more conventional means. That's because like any other spiritual technology, an exorcism doesn't address physical issues. And, since spirit attacks are relatively rare, most of the time they aren't the cause of the subject's problems.

It's possible that I'm being a little unfair here, since I know nothing about Manuel other than this news story. Maybe he's a totally amazing exorcist who also happens to know how to do adjustments. But the whole "treating patients for sex" thing doesn't fill me with confidence in his abilities.

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