THE PRACTICES and traditions of the healing arts known today as chiropractic have been exercised for centuries. "Adjusting" the osseous (bony) structures of the body, particularly the spine, skull, and pelvis, has long been in regular use to treat various ailments of the human body. The specific modern healing art called chiropractic began in 1895 in the small Mississippi River town of Davenport, Iowa. Here Daniel David Palmer, a 50-year-old Canadian immigrant, began the profession as practised today and devoted his entire life to establishing it as a rational science, art, and philosophy.
 

1995 marked the 150th anniversary of the birth of Daniel David Palmer.  It was also the 100th anniversary of the founding of chiropractic and the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Canadian Chiropractic College in Toronto.  The 1,000 lb memorial bust was rededicated in Palmer Memorial Park at the corner of Water and Queen Streets in Port Perry, Ontario, in 1995.  [Photo, courtesy Port Perry Star/Jeff Mitchell]

D.D. Palmer's father, Thomas, was born in 1823 in Prince Edward Island. A shoemaker, then grocer, Thomas eventually became a Port Perry, Ontario, school director and local postmaster. He and his wife, Catherine McVay, had three sons and three daughters. Daniel David, the eldest, was born March 7, 1845.

By the time he was eleven, D.D. had acquired the equivalent of an eighth grade education and was well into the study of high school subjects when his education was cut short. His father's business failed in 1856, and the family moved to the United States, leaving D.D. and his younger brother, nine-year-old Thomas, in Canada.

In 1865, D.D. and Thomas, now aged 20 and 18 respectively, left Port Perry because of lack of opportunity and walked south to Whitby, Ontario, on the shores of Lake Ontario. There they bought boat passage to Buffalo, New York. Three months later they rejoined their parents and siblings in Iowa.

Shortly after his arrival, 21-year-old D.D. became master in a one-room schoolhouse on the prairies. Over the ensuing years, three children were born to D.D. and his second wife, Louvenia. Despite successes with farming, beekeeping, and horticulture, D.D moved the family and married for a third time when Louvenia died.

It was during his stay in Illinois that D.D. became interested in spiritualism in addition to the art of "magnetic healing" which held that a magnetic field emanated from the body and that magnetic healers, by passing their hands over their patients' bodies, could influence this field and thereby the health of their patients. D.D. studied this and set up practice in Iowa as D.D. Palmer, vital healer.

In his book The Palmers, Dr. Daniel Palmer, D.D.'s grandson, outlined his grandfather's personal working style:

D. D. described his method of practising magnetic healing. He would develop a sense of being positive within his own body, sickness being negative. He would draw his hands over the area of pain and with a sweeping motion stand aside, shaking his hand and fingers vigorously taking away the pain as if it were drops of water.

 D.D. was apparently financially successful as a magnetic healer, averaging $3,000 to $4,000 per year income at a time when a suit cost $6.00 and a hotel room $2.00 a day. Justt as D.D.'s natural intellectual affinity attracted him to the concepts of magnetic healing, the creation of the healing art now called chiropractic came about from the melding of the scientific and the metaphysical.

On September 18, 1895, the profession of chiropractic was born when D.D. performed his first adjustment on a janitor in the building where D.D. had his office. As he reported in The Chiropractor's Adjuster.

Harvey Lillard ... had been so deaf for 17 years that he could not hear the racket of a wagon on the street or the ticking of a watch. I made inquiry as to the cause of his deafness and was informed that when he was exerting himself in a cramped, stooping position, he felt something give in his back and immediately became deaf An examination showed a vertebra racked from its normal position. I reasoned that if the vertebra was replaced, the man's hearing should be restored. With this object in view, a half hour talk persuaded Mr. Lillard to allow me to replace it. I racked it into position by using the spinous process as a lever and soon the man could hear as before. There was nothing 'accidental" about this as it was accomplished with an object in view, and the expected result was obtained. There was nothing 'crude" about this adjustment; it was specific so much so that no chiropractor has equalled it.

Following the proceeding, D.D. Palmer began exploring and developing his radical theory that suggested decreased nerve flow may be the cause of disease and that misplaced spinal vertebrae may cause pressure on various nerves thereby impeding impulses. If the spinal column were correctly positioned, he reasoned, the body would be healthy. The name he coined for the art was chiropractic from the Greek cheir meaning "hand" and praktos meaning "done."

Individuals with all kinds of health problems were responding to Palmer's new "hand treatments" - those with sciatica, asthma, skin conditions, digestive problems, migraine headaches, epilepsy ... the list went on and on.

In 1897 D.D. decided to teach his "big idea" to others and opened a chiropractic school. By 1902 fifteen people had graduated from the Palmer Infirmary and Chiropractic Institute. One of the earliest graduates was D.D.'s son, Bartlett Joshua (B.J.) Palmer, who would later become as memorable a figure in chiropractic history as his father, becoming known as the Developer of Chiropractic.

The turn of the century was a time of rapid change in health care as alternatives to allopathic medicine gained ground. Chiropractors, unlike medical doctors, were not officially licensed by government. It was not surprising, therefore, that Palmer, in 1906, was the first of hundreds of chiropractors convicted of practising medicine without a licence. He was sentenced to 105 days in jail. After serving 23 days, he paid the $350 fine to be released. But while in his cell he wrote prophetically:

The advancement of all sciences, especially where there has been such a radical change, have been attended with persecution. In fact, it seems necessary in order to bring it to public attention. Thousands are now talking about chiropractic and its discoverer who never heard of it before. The jailing of D.D. Palmer, a man who is ahead of the times, a man who dares to think, even in a cell, where the walls are iron and the floor the best cement, will not check the onward march of the science he has discovered.

After his release from prison, Palmer opened new schools I along the West coast, although most of them were short-live In spring 1911, D.D. took up residence in Los Angeles where he continued to lecture and write. His two most prominent works were The Science of Chiropractic and The Chiropractor's Adjuster.

D.D. Palmer died on October 20, 1913, at home in Los Angeles. The cause of death was typhoid fever; he had been ill for 28 days.

The singleness of purpose toward which he dedicated his life, his quest for the cause of disease and the restoration of health, was an all-consuming mistress. At his memorial service his long-time patient and confidant, Rev. Samuel H. Weed, eulogised:

I firmly believe that God raises up men for special purposes;and that he raised up D.D. Palmer for the purpose of giving to" the world this science in the beginnings....
Ralph Sciullo