After a recent stint where I could neither stand nor sit without experiencing the kind of lumbar pain that throbs like a Velvet Underground bass line, I decided to visit a disarmingly enthusiastic chiropractor (“Hi there! Why dontcha lie down on the table!”). He flipped me over, cracked my spine in a couple places, and told me I was still young. I was smiling as he gave my neck a final clinical squeeze, and then launched me off into the gauzy haze of the afternoon.

A friend of mine from North Carolina maintains that all chiropractors are quacks. Admittedly, I’ve never walked into a chiropractor’s office without feeling like I’m entering the premises of a sketch comedy troupe. Invariably, pictures of context-free smiling children compete with ‘degrees’ from institutions that sound more like yoga poses than legitimate medical facilities. The equipment looks like an elegant corporate art installation: random spirals connect with clunky, thickly padded steel shelving. Once you’re dangling on something like that, you feel like you’ve lost something. Dignity, yes; critical discernment, absolutely.

But during this visit, I realized that chiropractors should really be termed non-invasive physical therapists. It’s a high-intensity, low-impact healing, both mental and physical. You don’t have to talk about your childhood, and you don’t have to stare at warning pictures of inflamed organs while barely warmed metal implements are shoved into your nether regions. The idea that your ailments could somehow be prevented by the proper alignment of your spine is classic. It has a basic, soulful appeal, a return to a pure universe of order. It’s win-win, unless of course you’re bleeding internally. Does it actually help? I’m of the opinion that it certainly doesn’t hurt.

Photo: “American Book Company, 1924″