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The Winsor Autopsies

Henry Winsor, a medical doctor in Haverford, Pennsylvania, asked the question:

"Chiropractors claim that by adjusting one vertebra, they can relieve stomach troubles and ulcers; by adjusting another, menstrual cramps; and by adjusting others conditions such as kidney diseases, constipation, heart disease, thyroid conditions, and lung disease may resolve--but how?"

Dr. Winsor decided to investigate this new science and art of healing--chiropractic.

Dissections
After graduating from medical school, Dr. Winsor was inspired by chiropractic and osteopathic literature to experiment. He planned to dissect human and animal cadavers to see if there was a relationship between any diseased internal organ discovered on autopsy and the vertebrae associated with the nerves that went to the organ. As he wrote:

"The object of these necropsies (dissections) was to determine whether any connection existed between minor curvatures of the spine, on the one hand, and diseased organs on the other; or whether the two were entirely independent of each other."

University Permission
The University of Pennsylvania gave Dr. Winsor permission to carry out his experiments. In a series of three studies he dissected a total of 75 human and 22 cat cadavers. The following are Dr. Winsor's results:

"Two hundred twenty-one structures other than the spine were found diseased. Of these, 212 were observed to belong to the same sympathetic (nerve) segments as the vertebrae in curvature. Nine diseased organs belonged to different sympathetic segments from the vertebrae out of line.
These figures cannot be expected to exactly coincide ... for an organ may receive sympathetic filaments from several spinal segments and several organs may be supplied with sympathetic (nerve) filaments from the same spinal segments. In other words, there was nearly a 100 percent correlation between minor curvatures of the spine and diseases of the internal organs."

Diseases examined:

* Stomach Diseases
All nine cases of spinal misalignment in the mid-thoracic area (T5-T9) had stomach disease.
* Lung Disease
All 26 cases of lung disease had spinal misalignments in the upper thoracic spine.
* Liver Disease
All 13 cases of liver disease had misalignments in the mid thoracic (T5-T9)
 *Gallstones
All five cases with gallstone disease had spinal misalignments in the mid thoracic.
* Pancreas
All three cases with pancreas disease had spinal misalignments in the mid thoracics.
* Spleen
All 11 cases with spleen diseases had spinal misalignments in the mid thoracics.
* Kidney
All 17 cases with kidney disease were out of alignment in the lower thoracics.
* Prostate and Bladder Disease
All eight cases with kidney, prostate and bladder disease had the lumbar (L2-L3) vertebrae misaligned
* Uterus
The two cases with the uterine conditions had the second lumbar misaligned.
* Heart Disease
All 20 cases with heart and pericardium conditions had the upper five thoracic vertebrae (T1-T5) misaligned.

Dr. Winsor's results are published in The Medical Times, November 1921, and are found in any medical library.