-ic

A descriptive word that refers to an empty burial or cemetery monument.

A reference to a headache or a pain in the head: Mrs. Lawson called sup the principal of her school and told him that she had a cephalodynic disorder and a very sore throat and couldn't teach that day.

Referring to the size of the fetal head in relation to the maternal pelvis.

A reference to etchings or drawings made on wax surfaces: Cerographic, or glyphography, is a printmaking technique related to engraving, using a layer of wax over a metal surface and then after the image is engraved into the wax, a positive plate is produced with the stereotyping or electrotyping.

A reference to the neck and the thorax (the chest, or area of the body located between the neck and the abdomen that contains the lungs, the heart and part of the aorta).

1. Pertaining to an unordered, unpredictable, and perplexing situation: Every few weeks, Mrs. Smith asked her students in the fifth grade to clean up the inside of their desks, which were in a chaotic condition with a disarray and turmoil of pencils, notebooks, textbooks, old lunch wrappers, etc.
2. Descriptive of being in a state of complete confusion and lack of organization: Janet had a chaotic mass of books and papers in her living room. © ALL rights are reserved.

Go to this Word A Day Revisited Index
so you can see more of Mickey Bach's cartoons.

1. Able to distinguish the left from the right side of the body.
2. The ability to perceive which side of the body is being stimulated.
3. The ability to distinguish or recognize one's own or another's hand or parts of the hand.

A reference to cheiromancy or chiromancy.

1. A system of diagnosis and healing based on the concept that health and disease are related to nervous system functions and that disease is due to malfunctions of the nervous system due to noxious irritants, and health can be restored by their removal.
2. Someone who practices or is concerned with the curing of disease by manipulation of the structures of the human body; especially, those of the spinal column.

Concepts and Origins of Chiropractic Treatments

Chiropractic is grounded in the principal that the body can heal itself when the skeletal system is correctly aligned and the nervous system is functioning properly. To achieve this, the chiropractor uses his or her hands or an adjusting tool to perform specific manipulations of the vertebrae.

Chiropractic applications are now one of the most popular alternative therapies currently available. Some would say it now qualifies as "mainstream treatment" as opposed to complementary medical approaches.

Daniel D. Palmer is the founder of modern chiropractic theory, dating back to the 1890s. A grocer and magnetic healer, he applied his knowledge of the nervous system and manual therapies in an unusual situation. One renowned story concerns Harvey Lillard, a janitor in the office where Palmer worked. The man had been deaf for seventeen years, ever since he had sustained an injury to his upper spine. Palmer performed an adjustment on a painful vertebra in the region of the injury and Lillard's hearing was said to be restored.

Palmer theorized that all communication from the brain to the rest of the body passes through the spinal canal, and areas that are poorly aligned or under stress can cause physical symptoms both in the spine and in other areas of the body. So the body has the innate intelligence to heal itself when unencumbered by spinal irregularities causing nerve interference. After his success with Lillard, other patients began coming to him for care, and responded well to adjustments. This resulted in Palmer's further study of the relationship between an optimally functional spine and normal health.

Osteopathy is another related holistic discipline that utilizes spinal and musculoskeletal manipulation as a part of the physical treatment, but osteopathic training is more similar in scope to that of an M.D.

An original term for the medical practice of surgery, surgical.

Having a combination of therapeutic properties for chemotherapeutic and antibiotic objectives.