Medicine: Crusading Chiropractor

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, but every now & then the law interfered. In 13 years, Chiropractor Reaver was fined eight times. Next came three short jail sentences. On his twelfth conviction, Reaver drew a six-month sentence and a warning that if he practiced again he would be prosecuted as a habitual criminal. That did it. Last week Reaver announced that his crusade was ended and he was moving to Florida.