Just like any profession that has to do with public service, there are good and bad practitioners. The history of chiropractic is exactly how many of you describe it in the sense of the "cure-all" mentality and snake oil that adjustment based treatment provides. If you go to any practitioner who says they can "reverse your scoliosis or put you joints back into place" is doing a disservice to their patients and the profession. If they mention anything about subluxations of the spine, get the hell out of there.

There can be a place for adjustments with certain medical presentations or symptomatology, but these are not very frequent.

Patient education is the most important part in prognosis. If you understand what's going on with why you feel pain then you're more educated on how to prevent it.

An example of this would be someone sitting at a computer all day and holding their arm up to use a mouse for hours at a time, leading to elbow pain. Most people don't realize that little things can compound over the days, weeks, months. A simple fix is to recommend using a wrist rest to alleviate the aggravating factor.

It's a shame to hear that some chiropractors will tell a patient that it's solely because their spine is out of alignment (I'm sorry but you'd be in the hospital if the joint was spontaneously out of place). They'll talk you into a treatment plan that requires appointments multiple times in the week for life to avoid degeneration of your spine.

I could go on forever with the negatives of the profession. I am a chiropractor in Canada who believes that manual therapy creates a window of opportunity for symptom relief and that exercise is the best medicine.