LE SUEUR — When Richard Scott began his practice in Le Sueur, Harry Truman was president, patients sometimes paid him in hams and chickens, and the U.S. medical community regarded chiropractors and charlatans as a horse apiece.

“The AMA had a Committee on Quackery to run us out of the business,” Scott said.

In fact, Morris Fishbein, then secretary of the American Medical Association, called chiropractors “rabid dogs” and labeled them “playful and cute, but killers.”

But what a difference 60 years makes. That’s how long the 84-year-old Scott has been plying his skills in Le Sueur.

“I set a goal of 60 years, and now I’m going to go one year at a time, Lord willing.”

He dropped anchor there in 1949. He and wife Rosemary are from big cities — he from St. Paul, she from St. Louis — but they quickly warmed to small-town living.

“We love it. Wouldn’t trade it for anything,” he said.

To hear some of his patients, they wouldn’t trade him for anything either.

“I call him the ‘voodoo man,’” said retired food scientist Frank Ebert, who was plagued by sciatica when he sought Scott’s aid upon the recommendation of a medical doctor.

Two months later, Ebert’s nerve-related pain had exited.

“The guy just totally amazed me. I’ve kept going to him because he keeps me totally tweaked. I’m 68 and I act like I’m 40.”

Scott’s interest in chiropractic stemmed from his difficult birth. The doctor had to yank and tug, misaligning his neck bones and perhaps affecting nerves.

As a child he suffered from earaches and crossed eyes. His mother took him to a St. Paul chiropractor — “great big guy, used to be a boxer” — and Scott was set right.

When he began his practice in Le Sueur, chiropractors were still rare birds forced to deal with a public’s wariness.

But when he began helping people get healthy one after another, their leeriness gave way to advocacy.

The turning point may have come when he adjusted the vertebrae of a local car dealer in pain, who came to him in desperation.

Scott successfully manipulated him, the grateful guy went around like a town crier, and Scott’s waiting room began to swell.

One man who’d inexplicably lost all his body hair came in. Scott adjusted him and his hair grew back, albeit curly.

Another guy who fell off the back of a pickup truck arrived in a daze-like state complaining of neck pain. Scott went to work on him and the man came out of his fog.

“Once you’re in a rural area and get a good reputation, people would come in for everything,” said Scott who, as any reputable health professional, has always remained cognizant of his limitations.

When medical intervention is deemed appropriate, he’ll recommend that.

Scott works Tuesday and Friday mornings as a salaried employee of chiropractor Eric Saugen, who purchased the practice in 1988.

Saugen said what sets Scott apart from many of his colleagues is his zeal to constantly learn new techniques.

“He definitely feels like he has a lot to offer, and he still enjoys it,” Saugen said. “I work on him, he works on me, and we both keep each other healthy.”

Scott said he has taken many techniques and consolidated them into a form he calls applied kinesiology, which emphasizes making weak muscles stronger. He also uses a neuromechanical adjusting device that delivers rapid thrusts to problem areas of the body.

“It sounds like I’m doing a shingle job on a house.”

Scott’s patients include a rural couple he’s treated for half a century, and Karen Voss of Le Sueur.

Voss said the pain of job-related physical demands prompted her to see Scott after medical doctors couldn’t provide relief.

“I’m a cosmetologist, and I could not do my job if I didn’t have him. He genuinely cares about his patients. He’s the real deal.”

Scott has treated multiple generations of Le Sueur-area families. He said that’s something he humbly hangs his hat on.

“If you can stay in a town that long and do that, you’re not too bad.”