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The Clinician's Manual by Barrett L. Dorko, PT

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    • About Barrett L. Dorko P.T.
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Science & Reason

Discovery and Abduction

Barrett L. Dorko, P.T. I first came across the idea of neural tension while at dinner with the late David Lamb, one of the original architects of manual therapy education in Canada. He asked me if I’d ever heard of the work of Alf Breig, a Swedish neurosurgeon who had written a book several years earlier about his experience using surgery to resolve neurogenic pain. Breig proposed that many chronically painful conditions were due to the presence of mechanical tension within the neural structures, not compression. As it turns out, he was right. This concept of dysfunction remains largely unknown…

Asking Why: Evolutionary Reasoning and Manual Care

Barrett L. Dorko, P.T. In 1990 I wrote an essay about a young boy who’d been sent to me with an acutely painful neck. After turning it quickly left he experienced a great deal of pain and found that any attempt to return it toward the front felt even worse. I described the boy’s dilemma and then wrote: In Arlington Virginia The Old Guard marches before the Tomb of the Unknowns. Its members are remarkably the same in every respect. The precision of their movement is matched by the perfect stillness of their erect postures. They seem to embody composure…

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