Here’s the backstory.
In the Beginning…
When people hear the name Thomas Edison, they think of light bulbs or phonographs or maybe the motion picture camera. Globally he is known as a prolific American inventor and businessman whose work deeply affects our daily lives. Yet most people aren’t aware of his tremendous impact on healthcare.
That impact, however, wasn’t an invention. It was that visionary statement he made on January 2, 1903, regarding The Doctor of the Future.
In just a few words Edison foresaw and laid the groundwork for a health paradigm based not on pills and interventions, but on preventive care. He described a way of life where the human body, diet, and healthy living would form the foundation of well-being.
Edison was following the path already laid by D.D. Palmer on September 18, 1895, when he gave his first chiropractic adjustment to a janitor with an out of position vertebra, only to have him regain his hearing as a result. Since that time, chiropractors have been shifting the health care conversation away from allopathic care, which focuses on masking the symptoms, to building a lifestyle that honors and works with the body’s Innate Intelligence and its ability to adapt, heal, and thrive at every age.
Palmer’s actions and Edison’s words created an energetic grassroots movement while also causing a great deal of concern for the medical establishment. This concern led to the Flexner Report. Published in 1910 and funded by the Carnegie Foundation, the purpose of the report was to “reform medical education in the United States.”
Its malicious intent was clear and its recommendations were specific: standardize medical training, attack and close schools deemed subpar, (meaning all non-allopathic medical schools such as chiropractic osteopathy, naturopathy, homeopathy) and emphasize a biomedical model of health.
While these reforms arguably improved the standards of the allopathic community, they simultaneously cemented an allopathic, pharmaceutical-centric approach heavily promoted as the “gold standard of care.” Interestingly, these reforms were funded by and benefited some of the richest people in the world.
Their funding created new markets for their already monopolized pharmaceuticals and other medical products.
Perhaps one of the most striking ironies of this time was that John D. Rockefeller, through the Rockefeller Foundation, was also a significant funder of the Flexner Report. By raising massive amounts of money to support allopathic medical schools, he was creating a market for his “re-purposing” of petrochemicals.
To this day, petrochemicals are found in 99% of all pharmaceuticals. Rockefeller went as far as to purchase a German pharmaceutical company to create these drugs. That same company later manufactured chemicals and poisons that Hitler used in war. Yet, interestingly enough, it is documented that during the last seven years of his life Rockefeller turned to chiropractic care, the exact care he had spent millions of dollars trying to marginalize. While life expectancy at the time was 44.6 years, Rockefeller died at the age of 97, and he credited his chiropractor with much of his longevity and health span.
The Future is Here…
Fast forward roughly one century to October 25, 2010, when I updated Edison’s statement. Tired of so many people waiting for a future that had already arrived, I added one word and a hyphen to the original quote, and in doing so reframed his words for the present:
The Doctor of the Present will give no medicine* but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, in diet, and in the cause and prevention of dis-ease.
My adaptation was to make a clear statement that the “Doctor of the Future” is here. What that really means is that we as individuals must choose to practice prevention and self-care now. We must realize the power of each decision and lifestyle choice we make. We must recognize our health is dependent on those choices aligning with and supporting our body’s innate ability to heal.
We cannot be led down the path of allopathic medicine which makes us dependent on prescriptions and medical interventions designed to manipulate and even shut down our body’s natural ability to heal. We cannot abdicate our power to a system designed to keep us ill while it prospers in the process.
This approach to living at 100% is something The 100 Year Lifestyle® has been teaching since 1994, even before The 100 Year Lifestyle® had a name. And with the guidance of many great mentors who have long talked about these important foundational principles, The 100 Year Lifestyle® has helped move the needle with
millions of people now trusting the new paradigm. We raised our family this way. Families that have already made this shift are much healthier for having done so.