CHIROPRACTIC

Daniel David Palmer

“When I was a baby I was cradled in a piece of hemlock bark. My mother was as full of superstition as an egg is full of meat, but my father was disposed to reason on the subjects pertaining to life.” (Palmer, 1910, p. 17)

In this description of his parents, Daniel David Palmer, the founder of chiropractic, identified characteristics which were a part of himself. He was, on the one hand a practical man, ostensibly empirical and reasoned; but there was another side to him, a side which harboured supernatural beliefs which shaped not only his own personal life, but also the development of chiropractic.

Daniel Palmer was born in British North America, which today is Canada, in 1845. He immigrated to the United States with his brother Thomas in 1865. The American Civil War was coming to an end and the United States offered opportunities for work. Other members of his family, including his parents, had already made the journey. In Iowa he found employment as a teacher. In 1871 he married Abba Lord, and soon afterwards the couple purchased a plot of land where Palmer established an apiary and plant nursery. Palmer’s marriage to Abba Lord was short-lived, but her influence on him was considerable (Foley, Faulkner and Zins, 2017). She was a spiritualist who practised as a healer, advertising herself as “Dr. Abba Lord Palmer … Wonderful Psychometrist, and Clairvoyant Physician, Soul Reader and Business Medium.” (Palmer, 1872a). Having been brought up a Christian, but having questioned his faith, Abba Lord helped to convince Palmer that: “We live after the so-called death. Spirits can and do return. They give us any information that they have and desire to impart” (Palmer, 1872b).

Palmer was entrepreneurial, but in common with many business owners he faced both successes and failures. The winter of 1880-1881 brought exceptionally cold weather to parts of the United States. After the winter, on 14th April 1881, Palmer wrote in his journal: “Bees all dead”. In the years that followed he moved between towns. During the 1880s, having had no formal training in medicine, he, like Abba Lord, became a practising healer. In 1887 he was listed under “physicians”, “magnetic” in the Burlington City Directory (Polk, p. 267). Not long afterwards he moved to Davenport.

Chiropractic in the United States

In becoming a magnetic healer, Palmer, like Andrew Still, was probably inspired directly or indirectly by Paul Caster, who in the 1870s had established an infirmary for magnetic healing in Ottumwa, Iowa (Waterman, 1914, p. 237). Paul Caster died in 1881, but before his death it appears he encouraged his son Jacob to practise the art for which he also was thought to have a gift. According to the Biographical Review of Des Moines County, Iowa (Hobart, 1905, pp. 230-233), during the 1880s while employed with the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad Company as a machinist, Jacob Caster treated patients in Burlington. It would seem that there was significant demand for his services, so much so that in or about 1889 the younger Caster came to focus full time on magnetic healing. It is reasonable to assume that while in Burlington Palmer knew of Jacob Caster.

In Davenport Palmer’s practice took a new direction. It was there that he claimed to “discover” chiropractic in 1895, albeit inspired by the spirit of a man named Jim Atkinson (Palmer, 1914, p. 5). There can be little doubt that wittingly or unwittingly Palmer built upon the ideas of others (Wilson, 2012, pp. 35-47). Rightly or wrongly followers of Still alleged that chiropractic was based on osteopathy. In 1897 the Journal of Osteopathy charged (American School of Osteopathy, 1897):

“There is one fake magnetic healer in Iowa who issued a paper devoted to his alleged new system, and who until recently made up his entire publication from the contents of the Journal of Osteopathy, changing it only to insert the name of his own practice.”

Palmer’s chiropractic treatment involved joint manipulation, predominantly spinal joint manipulation. He understood that he was not the first to employ manipulation, something which he recognized had been practised for thousands of years (Palmer, 1910, p. 11). He did, however, claim to be the first to use the spinous and transverse processes of vertebrae as levers by which to restore the bones of the spinal column to their normal positions. He may not have been aware of it, but according to Little (1868, p. 57), Edward Harrison had done the same in the first half of the nineteenth century. Like Harrison, Palmer made a link between spinal subluxations and organic disease. According to Palmer, his first chiropractic patient was relieved of deafness following spinal adjustment. His second was relieved of “heart trouble” (Palmer, 1910, p. 18). It was his belief that these conditions were caused by nerve impingement, arising from vertebral misalignment, and that other conditions might have a similar cause.

Chiropractic was given its name by Samuel Weed, one of Palmer’s patients. It was derived from Greek words, suggesting healing “done by hand” (Palmer and Palmer, 1906, front matter). In about 1897 Palmer began to teach his ideas to others. One of his first students was Bartlett Joshua Palmer, his son. Like his father, Bartlett proclaimed the value of chiropractic adjustments for a wide range of health conditions, both musculoskeletal and organic. He was, like his father, a vitalist, believing in an immaterial force or “Innate Intelligence” which directed reparative processes within the body (Palmer, 1949, pp. 23-25). The focus of Palmerian chiropractic, like osteopathy, was to assist healing from within. The Palmers were less concerned with the study of environmental threats, including bacteria, as causative agents of disease, and more concerned with how human beings might be helped to respond to such threats. They were less concerned with the diagnosis of disease in itself, and more concerned with obstacles to nervous communication which might inhibit healing and thereby result in disease.

If chiropractic had emerged earlier Daniel Palmer might have practised as a medical doctor. As it was, he did not. In 1897 the State of Iowa introduced legislation which required medical practitioners to be licenced (State of Iowa, 1897). In order to be recognized, a record of formal medical education and successful completion of an examination was required. In Iowa and in other states, chiropractors were accused of practising medicine without a licence. They endured trials, convictions and imprisonment (Kimbrough, 1998). In the courts they argued that chiropractic was not medicine. They emphasized its differences. Chiropractic’s founder went so far as to consider turning his creation into a religion in order to protect it (Palmer, 1914, pp. 1-12).

In spite of significant opposition, there were many who found Palmerian theories appealing and a growing number of chiropractic schools came into existence. In time chiropractors sought and achieved legal recognition in the United States, but memories of past battles lived on in the collective memory. For some, chiropractic would remain incompatible with medical orthodoxy. Others sought to become a part of that orthodoxy.

Chiropractic in Britain

Chiropractic came to Britain in 1908, or there abouts. In that year Arthur Eteson, who had studied at the Palmer School of Chiropractic in Davenport, wrote to Bartlett Palmer from Southport in the north west of England to explain that he had received and used a chiropractic adjusting table (Eteson, 1908). It is of historical note that Eteson went on to study osteopathy and that he used a variety of different healing methods in his practice. Eteson was what chiropractic purists referred to as a “mixer”. In 1904 Daniel Palmer had accused another chiropractor, Solon Langworthy, of mixing chiropractic and osteopathic methods, of using an “osteopath table and a stretching machine”, in spite of having been taught chiropractic “without adjuncts” (Palmer, 1904). Mixing was unacceptable to the Palmers. Even so, the first European school to include chiropractic in its name was the Looker College of Osteopathy and Chiropractic, based in Manchester, England, which was incorporated under that name in 1923 (Looker College of Osteopathy and Chiropractic, 1923a & 1923b). In education and practice chiropractic and osteopathy were not entirely separate. In the absence of statutory regulation, in Britain under common law any person could describe himself or herself as a chiropractor or osteopath, they could use one or both titles, or move between them.

In Europe and the United States chiropractors were divided between those who accepted Palmerian ideas and methods in their pure form and those who thought and practised differently. To begin with the British Chiropractors’ Association, which was formed in 1925, was an organization of purists, an organization opposed to the blending of chiropractic and osteopathic ideas, but over time, especially in the years after World War II, the organization became more accepting of mixing. Not only that, the therapeutic claims of its members became less bold. There was growing acknowledgment that chiropractic did not offer the panacea envisioned by some of its pioneers. In 1961 the Norwegian chiropractor Arne Gjocih wrote (1961, p. 6):

“Concerning chiropractic as a cure for all, it must be assumed that all modern chiropractors do understand their healing art is of a rather limited scope. To specialise in the treatment of rather few disorders is the tendency today. In this connection one should not underestimate the common sense of the plain people. The man on the street will soon gather facts by experience and make up his mind what kind of treatment is good for his complaints.”

This way of thinking was in stark contrast to what went before. Palmerian chiropractic had represented a counter-culture to medical orthodoxy, an alternative system incompatible with biomedicine. By focusing care on a limited range of conditions and by emphasizing empiricism over supernaturalism, chiropractic could become complementary rather than alternative to mainstream medicine. As chiropractors came to accept the medical paradigm and acknowledge the power and authority of medical elites, there was greater recognition of their work within orthodox circles. In Britain this medicalization of chiropractic culminated in legal acceptance in the form of the Chiropractors Act (UK Parliament, 1994). Following the Act, the General Chiropractic Council was established to regulate chiropractic and to determine who could, and who could not, legally be described as a chiropractor. The General Chiropractic Council distanced itself from chiropractic traditionalism, preferring to emphasize partnership with the medical profession. The claim that subluxations caused organic disease was challenged by the regulator (General Chiropractic Council, 2010). Despite this, counter-currents of opinion continued to exist among those who practised chiropractic, resulting in ideological disunity.

References

American School of Osteopathy [publisher] (1897). Publisher’s notes. Journal of Osteopathy IV (4), 213.

Eteson A.D. (1908). Letter from A.D. Eteson to B.J. Palmer. Annual Announcement 2, 171.

Foley J., Faulkner T. and Zins S. (2017). Abba Lord: D.D. Palmer’s first wife and a powerful influence on his future. Chiropractic History 37 (1), 7-15.

General Chiropractic Council (2010). Guidance on Claims Made for the Chiropractic Vertebral Subluxation Complex. General Chiropractic Council, London.

Gjocih A. (1961). Chiropractic, as it was, as it is. Bulletin of the European Chiropractic Union 1 (6), 5-11.

Hobart [publisher] (1905). Biographical Review of Des Moines County, Iowa. Hobart Publishing Company, Chicago, Illinois.

Kimbrough M.L. (1998). Jailed chiropractors: those who blazed the trail. Chiropractic History 18 (1), 79-100.

Little W.J. (1868). On Spinal Weakness and Spinal Curvatures. Longman Green and Co., London.

Looker College of Osteopathy and Chiropractic (1923a). Memorandum and Articles of Association of the Looker College of Osteopathy and Chiropractic Ltd. Registration as a limited company under the Companies Acts.

Looker College of Osteopathy and Chiropractic (1923b). Certificate of Incorporation of the Looker College of Osteopathy and Chiropractic Ltd. Registration as a limited company under the Companies Acts.

Palmer A.L. (1872a). Advertisement for Anna Lord Palmer. Medium’s Column. Religio-Philosophical Journal XII (16), 3.

Palmer B.J. (1949). The Bigness of the Fellow Within. Palmer School of Chiropractic, Davenport.

Palmer D.D. (1872b). Letter from Daniel Palmer. Religio-Philosophical Journal XII (16), 6.

Palmer D.D. (1881). Extract from the Journal of Daniel Palmer.

Palmer D.D. (1904). What an exchange says. The Chiropractor 1 (1), 6-7.

Palmer D.D. (1910). The Science, Art and Philosophy of Chiropractic. The Chiropractor’s Adjuster. Portland Printing House Company, Portland.

Palmer D.D. (1914). The Chiropractor. Beacon Light Printing Company, Los Angeles.

Palmer D.D. and Palmer B.J. (1906). The Science of Chiropractic. Palmer School of Chiropractic, Davenport.

Polk [publisher] (1887). Burlington City Directory. R.L. Polk and Co., Kansas City.

State of Iowa (1897). Annotated Code of the State of Iowa. F.R. Conaway, Des Moines.

UK Parliament (1994). Chiropractors Act. 1994, Chapter 17, Elizabeth 2.

Waterman H.L. [editor] (1914). History of Wapello County, Iowa. Volume 1. The S.J. Clarke Publishing Company, Chicago.

Wilson F.J.H. (2012). The Origins and Professional Development of Chiropractic in Britain. PhD Thesis, University of Southampton.