A chiropractic camp in progress. A Telegraph picture

Siliguri, July 17: Stone-crusher Aghar Roy, 72, of Balason Colony suffered from lower back pain for as long as he could remember.

Roy had given up on medicines after painkillers stopped working for him. But when he heard of some saheb doctors camping by the riverside and treating pains by just “tickling the spinal cord”, he could not resist giving it a try.

After five days, he was able to bend down to pick his great-grandson up in his arms.

Roy, and countless others like him, are grateful to the 28 Australians — comprising four doctors and 24 interns from Murdoch University in Perth — who organised special chiropractic camps for stone crushers.

Chiropractic (from Greek cheira and praktikos, meaning “done by hand”) is a health care model, which tries to diagnose and treat mechanical disorders of the spine and musculoskeletal system without using drugs or surgery.

Chiropractic was founded in 1895 by Daniel David Palmer, who believed that 95 per cent of all health problems could be prevented or treated through spinal adjustments, and the rest by adjustments of other joints.

“We organised three eight-day camps on the banks of three rivers, the Balason (at Balason Colony), the Chenga (Ghospukur) and the Manja (Dupaiya Jote),” said Father James Gonsalves, the director of Seva Kendra. The Siliguri-based NGO was a joint organiser.

Over 400 people attended the camps, held for the second time in the past two years. “Patients came with all sorts of ailments, be it fever or backache,” said Jonathan Man, a doctor in chiropractic from Adelaide who has been practising for the past 20 years.

“This was a wonderful internship programme for us,” Paul Harlond, the team leader and an intern in Murdoch University, told The Telegraph. “We chose to come here and work with the stone crushers, about whom we found on the Internet, so that we are able to help the needy while doing our internship. Students of our university organise such programmes in Africa. While our stay is taken care of by Seva Kendra, we have ourselves paid for the air-tickets.”

Harlond said the university has decided to make the visit to north Bengal an annual affair. “We will also involve other Australian universities too,” he added.

Like doctors in medicine, doctors in chiropractic have to undergo a five-year course in Australia after high school, Harlond said.