The History of Chiropractic

Abstract

I was the first to adjust the cause of disease.

I was the first to adjust the cause of disease.

— D. D. Palmer

Who better to summarise the beginnings of chiropractic than Daniel David Palmer, the man who never left any doubt that it was he, and he alone, who invented it? Here is the start of his article¹ entitled ‘A Brief History of the Author and Chiropractic’:

I was born on March 7, 1845, a few miles east of Toronto, Canada. My ancestors were Scottish and Irish on my maternal and English and German on my paternal side.

When my grandparents settled near the now beautiful city of Toronto, there was but one log house, the beginning of that great city. That region was then known as ‘away out west’.

I came within one of never having a mamma. My mother was one of a pair of twins one of which died. The one who lived weighed only one and a half pounds.

When a baby I was cradled in a piece of hemlock bark. My mother was as full of superstition as an eff is full of meat, but my father was disposed to reason on the subjects pertaining to life.

I was a magnetic healer for nine years previous to discovering the principles which comprise the method known as Chiropractic. During this period much of what was necessary to complete the science was worked out. I had discovered that many diseases were associated with derangements of the stomach, kidneys and other organs…

One question was always uppermost in my mind in my search for the cause of disease. I desired to know why one person was ailing and his associate, eating at the same table, working in the same shop, at the same bench, was not. Why? What difference was there in the two persons that caused one to have pneumonia, catarrh, typhoid or rheumatism, while his partner, similarly situated, escaped? Why? This question had worried thousands for centuries and was answered in September 1895…

September 18, 1895 is the day when Daniel David (DD) Palmer invented chiropractic. On that occasion, he manipulated the spine of a deaf janitor by the name of Harvey Lillard, allegedly curing him of his deafness (Box 2.1). An examination showed a vertebra racked from its normal position, Palmer wrote, I reasoned that if that vertebra was replaced, the man’s hearing should be restored (see footnote 1). Palmer’s second patient was a man suffering from heart disease (Box 2.2).² Palmer wrote: I examined the spine and found a displaced vertebra pressing against the nerves which innervate the heart. I adjusted the vertebra and gave immediate relief… (see footnote 1)

Palmer had been one of 6 children of parents who had immigrated from Canada to the US in search for work. During the first 20 years of his adult life, he worked in various professions (Box 2.3). His attraction to all things medical then made him try his luck as a magnetic healer,³ and it was then that the fateful encounter with his janitor changed his life for ever.

Palmer later wrote in his book, ‘Chiropractor’s Adjuster’,⁴ that he learned about manipulation during a séance from the ghost of a medical practitioner named Jim Atkinson whose work, 50 years earlier, had formed the basis of Palmer’s new method:

The knowledge and philosophy given to me by Dr. Jim Atkinson, an intelligent spiritual being, together with explanations of phenomena, principles resolved from causes, effects, powers, laws, and utility, appealed to my reason. The method by which I obtained an explanation of certain physical phenomena, from an intelligence in the spiritual world, is known in biblical language as inspiration. In a great measure, The Chiropractor’s Adjuster was written under such spiritual promptings.

Palmer stated that chiropractic was not evolved from medicine or any other method, except that of magnetic (see footnote 2). A friend of Palmer’s, Rev Samuel Weed, is credited with creating the word ‘chiropractic’, but Palmer coined the term “innate intelligence” (or “innate”) for the assumed “energy” or “vital force,” which, according to his belief, enables the body to heal itself. Palmer claimed that the “innate” controls all body functions. In the presence of “vertebral subluxation,” the innate was blocked, he postulated. Thus, subluxations are the cause of all disease. Palmer developed spinal manipulations to correct subluxations and thus unblock the flow of the innate and defined chiropractic as a system of healing based on the premise that the body requires unobstructed flow through the nervous system of innate intelligence (see footnote 2).

Palmer wrote: by daily adjusting the vertebrae … I was not only performing a normal obligation, but also a religious duty.⁵ He was convinced that the representative of the “Innate Intelligence” was God within each person and that he had discovered a natural law that pertained to human health in the most general way. At one stage, DD and his son BJ Palmer even toyed with the idea of becoming the founders of a new religion and wrote that the religion of chiropractic and the religious duty of a chiropractor are one and the same (see footnote 4). DD declared that he had discovered the answer to the time-worn question, what is life?, and added that chiropractic made this stage of existence much more efficient in its preparation for the next step—the life beyond (see footnote 2).

Spinal manipulations or adjustments were not originally meant by Palmer as techniques for treating spinal or musculoskeletal problems; he saw them as a cure for all human illness and stated that disease is caused by displaced vertebrae or other joints pressing against nerves (see footnote 4), and that 95% of all diseases are caused by displaced vertebrae, the remainder by subluxations of other joints (see footnote 2). Early chiropractic pamphlets rarely mentioned back or neck pain, but asserted that, chiropractic could address ailments as diverse as insanity, sexual dysfunction, measles and influenza. Palmer was convinced that he had created a science of principles that has existed as long as the vertebra (see footnote 2). He envisioned man as a microcosm of the universe where “innate intelligence” determines human health as much as “universal intelligence” governs the cosmos; the discovery of the “innate intelligence” was in his view a discovery of the first order, a reflection of a critical law that God used to govern natural phenomena (see footnote 2).

Palmer’s gospel spread fast. By 1925, more than 80 chiropractic schools had sprung up in the US. Most were mere “diploma mills” promising an easy way to make money. Chiropractors believed they had established their own form of science, which emphasized observation rather than experimentation, a vitalistic rather than mechanistic philosophy, and a mutually supportive rather than antagonist relationship between science and religion. The gap between conventional medicine and chiropractic soon widened from a fissure into a canyon.

Such rivalry was not confined to conventional medicine, but extended also to osteopaths. DD Palmer taught his students: don’t do anything as an osteopath does (see footnote 4). Some osteopaths asserted that chiropractic was a bastardized version of osteopathy (see footnote 1). In papers dated 1899 and held at the Palmer College of Chiropractic DD Palmer admitted to have ‘borrowed’ from osteopathy:

Some years ago I took an expensive course in Electropathy, Cranial Diagnosis, Hydrotherapy, Facial Diagnosis. Later I took Osteopathy [which] gave me such a measure of confidence as to almost feel it unnecessary to seek other sciences for the mastery of curable disease. Having been assured that the underlying philosophy of chiropractic is the same as that of osteopathy…Chiropractic is osteopathy gone to seed.⁶

In 1924, BJ Palmer introduced the neurocalometer, a heat-sensing instrument purported to detect subluxation.⁷ The instrument was advertised as a remarkable innovation with multiple uses and advantages:

The Neurocalometer is a very delicate, sensitive instrument which, when placed upon the spine:

• 1 Verifies the proper places for adjustments.

• 2 It measures the specific degree of vertebral pressures upon nerves.

• 3 It measures the specific degree of interference to transmission of mental impulses as a result of vertebral pressure.

• 4 It proves the exact intervertebral foramina that contains bone pressure upon nerves.

• 5 It proves when the pressure has been released upon nerves at a specific place.

• 6 It proves how much pressure was released, if any.

• 7 It verifies the differences between cord pressure or spinal nerve pressure cases.

• 8 It establishes which cases we can take and which we should leave alone.

• 9 It proves by an established record which you can see thereby eliminating all guesswork on diagnoses.

• 10 It establishes, from week to week, whether you are getting well or not.

• 11 It makes possible a material reduction in time necessary to get well, thus making health cheaper….(see footnote 7)

In reality, the neurocalometer was a useless scam. Yet, BJ forced all his followers to lease it at exorbitant costs. It has been called a model of unethical promotions in health care, (see footnote 7) and divided the Universal Chiropractors’ Association thus precipitating the formation of the National Chiropractic Association (NCA), forerunner of today’s American Chiropractic Association.

Critical voices were soon raised against chiropractic. In 1924, Henry Louis Mencken (1880–1956) published an essay on chiropractic, many aspects of which are still relevant today⁸:

This preposterous quackery [chiropractic] flourishes lushly in the back reaches of the Republic, and begins to conquer the less civilized folk of the big cities. As the old-time family doctor dies out in the country towns, with no competent successor willing to take over his dismal business, he is followed by some hearty blacksmith or ice-wagon driver, turned into a chiropractor in six months, often by correspondence… [Chiropractic] pathology is grounded upon the doctrine that all human ills are caused by pressure of misplaced vertebrae upon the nerves which come out of the spinal cord — in other words, that every disease is the result of a pinch. This, plainly enough, is buncombe. The chiropractic therapeutics rest upon the doctrine that the way to get rid of such pinches is to climb upon a table and submit to a heroic pummeling by a retired piano-mover. This, obviously, is buncombe doubly damned…

The first article on chiropractic listed in ‘Medline’, the world’s largest database of medical papers, was published in 1913 in the ‘California State Journal of Medicine’⁹:

Some people are really so terribly modest that it is a mystery how they can live, or even be willing to live, in a world so filled with pushing braggarts and rampant commercialism. For example, note the list of things that E. R. Blanchard D.C., (graduate chiropractor), intimates that he can cure:

“Adhesions, anemia, asthma, appendicitis, blood poison, bronchitis, backache, biliousness, catarrh, constipation, chills and fever, diabetes, dropsy, dizziness, drug and alcohol habits, diarrhoea, deafness, eczema, eye diseases, female diseases, gallstones, gravel, goitre, hay fever, indigestion, lumbago, locomotor ataxia, malaria, nervousness, neuralgia, paralysis, piles, pneumonia, rickets, ruptures, rheumatism, St. Vitus’ dance, suppressed or painful menstruation, scrofula, tumors, worms, bed wetting and other child’s diseases, leucorrhoea, or whites, stricture, emissions, impotence and many other diseases.”

This is almost as long a list as that compiled by the wealthy and admired Law brothers in connection with what they say they can cure with the wonderful Viavi, that prize of all fakes!

Chiropractors’ distain for the medical profession is evident in DD Palmer’s early texts: physicians deal with the physical only; chiropractors with both the physical and the spititual (see footnote 4). The American Medical Association (AMA) had always insisted that all competent healthcare providers must have adequate knowledge of the essential subjects such as anatomy, physiology, pathology, chemistry, and bacteriology. By that token, the AMA claimed, chiropractors were not fit for practice.

Prosecutions against chiropractors for practising medicine without a licence, often instigated by state medical boards, became increasingly common. By 1930, about 15,000 chiropractors had thus been taken to court. In turn, chiropractors started conducting political lobbying to secure licensing statutes. They eventually succeeded in all US states, from Kansas in 1913 to Louisiana in 1974. In turn, chiropractors accused doctors of merely defending their lucrative patch and claimed that orthodox science was morally corrupt and lacked open-mindedness. They attacked the “germo-anti-toxins-vaxiradi-electro-microbioslush death producers” and promised a medicine “destined to the grandest and greatest of this or any age (see footnote 2).” Eventually, the escalating battle against the medical establishment was won in what chiropractors like to call “the trial of the century.” In 1987, the U.S. medical establishment were found “guilty of conspiracy against chiropractors”.¹⁰

But such victories came at the price of “taming” and “medicalizing” chiropractic, a process that formed the basis of a conflict within the chiropractic profession: the dispute between “mixers” and “straights”, a conflict which continues to the present day. Put simply, the “straights” religiously adhere to Palmer’s notions of the “innate intelligence” and view subluxation as the sole cause and manipulation as the sole cure of all human disease. They do not mix any non-chiropractic techniques into their therapeutic repertoire, dismiss physical examination (beyond searching for subluxations) and consider medical diagnosis irrelevant for chiropractic. The “mixers” are somewhat more open to science and the advances of conventional medicine, use various treatments other than spinal manipulation, and tend to see themselves as back pain specialists. DD and BJ Palmer warned that the “mixers” were polluting and diluting the sacred philosophy of chiropractic. Much of the endless wrangling within the chiropractic profession during the 20th century was due to this tension. Even today, many straight chiropractors agree that the mixers are a discredit to chiropractic.

The International Chiropractic Association represents the “straights” and the American Chiropractic Association the “mixers.” What unites all is a determination to dominate healthcare across the globe. In 2019, the World Federation of Chiropractic published their strategic plan for 2019–2022¹¹:

The World Federation of Chiropractic (WFC) envisions a world in which people may enjoy universal access to chiropractic so that populations may thrive and reach their full potential. We exist to support and empower chiropractors and chiropractic associations throughout our 7 world regions to realize this vision by promoting the chiropractic profession and the benefits of the services that chiropractors provide…

In Chap. 3, I will discuss how far this ‘universal access’ to chiropractic has progressed.

FormalPara Box 2.1

Mr William Harvey Lillard was cleaner of the Ryan Building where D. D. Palmer’s magnetic healing office was located. In 1895, he became Palmer’s very first chiropractic patient and thus entered the history books. The foundations of chiropractic are based on this story.

[Testimony of Harvey Lillard regarding the events surrounding the first chiropractic adjustment, printed in the January 1897 issue of the Chiropractor]

The nerve supply of the inner ear, the structure that enables us to hear, does not, like most other nerves of our body, run through the spine; it comes directly from the brain: the acoustic nerve is one of the 12 cranial nerves. Therefore, it is not plausible that spinal manipulation might cure deafness. In other words, the story of the 1st chiropractic cure is bogus.

FormalPara Box 2.2

DD Palmer’s description of his cure of a patient with heart disease

Shortly after this relief from deafness, I had a case of heart trouble which was not improving. I examined the spine and found a displaced vertebra pressing against the nerves which innervate the heart. I adjusted the vertebra and gave immediate relief—nothing “accidental” or “crude” about this. Then I began to reason if two diseases, so dissimilar as deafness heart trouble, came from impingement, a pressure on nerves, were not other disease due to a similar cause, Thus the science (knowledge) and art (adjusting) of Chiropractic were formed at that time. I then began a systematic investigation for the cause of all diseases and have been amply rewarded.

FormalPara Box 2.3

Milestones in the life of DD Palmer

1845, 7 March: birth in Port Perry, Canada.

1865, 3 April: Palmer family immigrate to the US.

1867: DD Palmer starts as a teacher in Concord, Iowa.

1869, November: DD and his younger brother TJ become beekeepers in Letts, Iowa.

1871, 20 January: DD marries Abba Lord who calls herself a ‘psychometrist, clairvoyant physician, soul reader and business medium’.

1872, 6 July: DD publishes an article in the ‘Religio-Philosophical Journal’ calling himself an ‘atheist’.

1872: DD later states that he started his career as a ‘healer’ during this period.

1873: Abba leaves DD and later becomes a ‘homeopathic physician’ in Minneapolis.

1876, 7 October: DD marries Louvenia Landers, a widow; they have 4 children together.

1878, 19 April: the Palmer’s 5-month old daughter dies.

1878, May: DD is elected president of the ‘Western Illinois and Eastern Iowa Society of Bee Keepers’.

1880: DD publishes a pamphlet about spiritualism and refers to himself as a ‘spiritualist’.

1881: BJ Palmer is born; he later takes over the chiropractic business and is often referred to as the ‘developer of chiropractic’.

1882: DD sells his beekeeping business, moves to What Cheer, Iowa where the rest of his family live.

1883, 30 May: DD opens a grocery store in What Cheer.

1884, 20 November: Louvenia dies of consumption.

1885, February: DD sells his grocery store and ‘moves on’.

1885, 25 May: DD marries Martha Henning. The marriage is short-lived; on 8 July of the same year, DD posted a public notice in the ‘What Cheer Patriot’ disowning her.

1885: DD moves back to Letts where he teaches at the local school.

1886: DD moves to Iola, Kansas where he practices as a magnetic healer and calls himself ‘Dr Palmer, healer’.

1886, 3 September: DD advertises his services as a ‘vitalist healer’ in Burlington, Iowa.

1887, 9 October: DD advertises ‘dis-ease is a condition of not ease, lack of ease’, a theme that he later uses for chiropractic.

1887, 25 October: one of DD’s patients has dies and there is an inquest. The local paper describes DD with the term ‘dense ignorance’ and the coroner states that ‘we censure the so-called doctor, DD Palmer, attending physician, for his lack of treatment and ignorance in the case’. DD leaves Burlington to avoid persecution (a new law requires all healers to register with the state medical board. DD does not have such a registration).

1887: DD moves to Davenport and advertises: DD Palmer, cures without medicine…’

1888, 6 November: DD marries Villa; they stay together until her death in 1905.

1894: DD publishes his views on smallpox vaccination: ‘…the monstrous delusion … fastened on us by the medical profession, enforced by the state boards, and supported by the mass of unthinking people …’

1894: DD publishes his views on ‘greedy doctors’ and the ‘medical monopoly’.

1895, January: DD starts a business selling goldfish.

1895, 18 September: DD administers the 1st spinal manipulation to Harvey Lillard (DD later seems confused about this date stating that this ‘was done about Dec. 1st, 1895’).

1896, 14 January is the date when, according to DD, chiropractic received its name with the help of Reverent Weed.

1896: DD publishes an article in ‘The Magnetic’ stating ‘the magnetic cure: how to get well and keep well without using poisonous drugs’.

1896: DD publishes his theory that bacteria cannot grow on healthy tissue; keeping tissue healthy is therefore the best prevention against infections; and this is best achieved by magnetic healing.

1896: DD claimed that 4 years earlier, in 1892, he had discovered the magnetic cure for cancer; it involved freeing the stomach and spleen of poisons.

1896: DD formulates his concept of treating the root cause of any disease.

1896, 10 July: DD, his wife and his brother turn the ‘Palmer School of Magnetic Cure’ in Davenport into an officially registered corporation.

1897: DD defines chiropractic as ‘a science of healing without drugs’.

1898: DD opens his first school of chiropractic in Davenport, the ‘Palmer School of Chiropractic’ which has survived to the present day.

1902, 27 April: DD first uses the term ‘subluxation’ in a letter to his son BJ (‘… where you find the greatest heat, there you will find the subluxation causing the inflammation which produces the fever…’).

1902: DD leaves suddenly for California, apparently to open a West Coast branch of the Palmer School; he stays for about two years and then returns to Davenport leaving behind substantial debts.

1902, 6 September: DD is arrested in Pasadena when a patient suffering from consumption dies after DD’s second adjustment; in October, the charges were dropped because of a technicality.

1903: DD opens the ‘Palmer Chiropractic School in Santa Barbara, California, together with his former student Oakley Smith.

1903 DD is charged with practising medicine without licence but, before the case comes to trial, DD moves to Chicago where he opens a school together two other chiropractors (Smith and Paxson); however, the project fails.

1903, 30 April: DD is back in Davenport for the wedding of BJ with Mabel.

1904, December: DD starts his new journal ‘The Chiropractor’ which survives until 1961. DD’s very first article is entitled ‘17 Years of Practice’.

1905: DD’s former students Langworthy and Smith accuse DD of stealing the concepts of chiropractic from the Bohemian bonesetters of Iowa.

1905, 9 November: DD’s wife Villa overdoses on morphine and dies; the coroner is unable to tell whether she committed suicide or intended it for pain relief.

1906, 11 January: DD marries Mary Hunter, apparently his first love from Letts.

1906, 26 March: DD is again on trial for practising medicine without a licence. He is found guilty the next day. The penalty is US$ 350 or 105 days in jail. DD choses jail. However, his new wife, Mary, bails him out after 23 days.

1906: DD sells his share in the chiropractic business to BJ and moves to Medford Oklahoma. The reasons for this split are said to be personal, financial and professional.

1906, 4 June: in a letter to John Howard, DD accuses BJ of dishonesty and of running the school badly.

1906: BJ and DD publish their opus maximus ‘Science of Chiropractic’; DD claims that most of the chapters were written by him.

1907, January: DD opens another grocery store.

1908: together with a colleague, DD opens the ‘Palmer-Gregory Chiropractic College’; it lasts only 9 weeks. DD left because he discovered that Alva Gregory, a medical doctor, was teaching medical concepts.

1908, 9 November: DD opens the ‘Palmer College of Chiropractic’ in Portland, Oregon.

1908, December: DD starts a new journal, ‘The Chiropractor’s Adjuster’; many of his articles focus on criticising BJ. The journal only seems to have survived until 1910.

1910, December: DD publishes his book ‘The Chiropractor’s Adjuster’.

1911: DD toys with the idea of turning chiropractic into a religion, as this would avoid chiropractors being sued for practising medicine without a license, he states.

1913: DD visits Davenport for the ‘Lyceum Parade’ where he is injured. Mary accuses BJ of striking his father with his car and thus indirectly causing his death, a version of events which is disputed.

1913, September: DD is back in California and writes to JB Olson that he gave 22 lectures in Davenport. DD also reports: ‘… On the return I cured a man of sun stroke by one thrust on the 5^th dorsal. That is what I call definitive, specific, scientific chiropractic…’.

1913, 20 October: DD dies; the official cause of death is typhoid fever, a condition he had repeatedly claimed to be curable by a single spinal adjustment.

1914: DD Palmer’s book ‘The Chiropractor’ is published.

FormalPara Box 2.4

Definitions of chiropractic

During the last 120 years, many different definitions of chiropractic (see footnote 1) have emerged.

Chiropractic is:

• the art of adjusting by hand all subluxations of the three hundred articulations of the human skeletal frame, more especially the 52 articulations of the spinal column, for the purpose of freeing impinged nerves, as they emanate thru the intervertebral foramina, causing abnormal function, in excess or not, named disease (DD Palmer, BJ Palmer 1906).

• a form of alternative medicine mostly concerned with the diagnosis and treatment of mechanical disorders of the musculoskeletal system, especially the spine (Wikipedia).

• a system of therapy which holds that disease results from a lack of normal nerve function and which employs manipulation and specific adjustment of body structures such as the spinal column (Merriam Webster).

• a method of treatment that manipulates body structures (especially the spine) to relieve low back pain or even headache or high blood pressure (sensagent).

• a system of treating bodily disorders by manipulation of the spine and other parts, based on the belief that the cause is the abnormal functioning of a nerve (Collins English Dictionary).

• a science of healing without drugs (DD Palmer).

• a natural form of health care that uses spinal adjustments to correct these misalignments and restore proper function to the nervous system, helping your body to heal naturally (Palmer College of Chiropractic).

• a non-invasive, hands-on health care discipline that focuses on the musculoskeletal system (Ontario Chiropractic Association).

• a health care profession that focuses on disorders of the musculoskeletal system and the nervous system, and the effects of these disorders on general health (American Chiropractic Association).

• a healthcare discipline that emphasizes the inherent recuperative power of the body to heal itself without the use of drugs or surgery. The practice of chiropractic focuses on the relationship between structure (primarily the spine) and function (as coordinated by the nervous system) and how that relationship affects the preservation and restoration of health. In addition, doctors of chiropractic recognize the value and responsibility of working in cooperation with other health care practitioners when in the best interest of the patient. (Association of Chiropractic Colleges).

• a health care profession concerned with the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of disorders of the neuromusculoskeletal system and the effects of these disorders on general health. There is an emphasis on manual techniques, including joint adjustment and/or manipulation with a particular focus on subluxations (WHO).

• a separate and distinct profession dedicated to the detection and correction of vertebral subluxation for the better expression of life (International Federation of Chiropractors and Organizations).

• a health profession concerned with the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of mechanical disorders of the musculoskeletal system, and the effects of these disorders on the function of the nervous system and general health. There is an emphasis on manual treatments including spinal adjustment and other joint and soft-tissue manipulation (World Federation of Chiropractic).

• a treatment where a practitioner called a chiropractor uses their hands to help relieve problems with the bones, muscles and joints (NHS England).