Background: Manual therapy or manipulative therapy had evolved from a technique-based paradigm to a profession-based one, with its scientific literature built upon anecdotal and theoretical or experiential evidence. Objective of Study: To quantitatively explore the existing evidence base for manual/manipulative therapy in PubMed through a review and analysis of current scientific literature. Methods: Descriptive exploratory study through a literature search was done to identify nine time-points in the timeline from 1970-2010, with five-year intervals in order to identify the scientific trend. The number of obtained citations were classified and analyzed under the names of search filters of PubMed namely- text availability, publication date, species, article type, language, gender, subject areas, journal categories and age groups. The numbers for categories and subcategories of search filters were considered for comparison and analysis. Descriptive analysis using frequencies on Microsoft Excel 2010 worksheet was done. Results: There is an exponential increase in number of articles in general over the 40 years. There was more number of ‘abstract available’ articles. Human studies were more than animal studies. There was more number of clinical trials among the article types. More articles were of English language, with nearly equal gender representation. There were more number of articles on complementary medicine, and MEDLINE journals had more articles, with more in adult and middle-age for study populations. Conclusion: This study provided information on current state of evidence for manual/manipulative therapy in a 40-year trend. This trend was similar to overall trend for all articles indexed in PubMed reported previously.