I palpate the spine in order to locate the 12th dorsal vertebra. A displacement displaces vertebrae, spreads them apart, does not draw them together. To close them up would not be displacing. To luxate, dislocate would not be to draw the bones more compactly together. I proceed to palpate on both sides of the spine, using one finger and thereby determine which one or both of the 12th pair of nerves and the one or both of the kidneys are affected.
Palpation is made by a verticle movement back and forth of a half-inch.
The sensitive, contracted nerve or nerves may be followed to the affected kidney or kidneys. This procedure is known as nerve-tracing, an art not known to pathologists, the subcutaneous nerves thusly followed are not known to anatomists. This diagnosis is of no value to the one who does not comprehend it or does not make use of it, to the one who adjusts anywhere and everywhere regardless of the determination of the nature of disease it is is valueless, to the one who adjusts without making a scientific discrimination, it is worthless, to the one who adjusts every other vertebrae today and the intervening one tomorrow it would be despised, to the one who adjusts every vertebrae for any and all diseases, commencing at the atlas in order to drive the disease down and out it would be condemned. A student of the Bohemian thrust wrote me I lay awake at night searching the depths of my creative ability for a painless thrust. For the last three years I have clinked each vertebrae of the entire spine without pain or discomfort to the patient.