On 18 September, the chiropractic profession celebrated its 126th birthday. The following is an article by Dr Frank M. Painter, describing the beginning of a profession that is helping millions of people around the world to function better naturally:
D.D. Palmer the Father of Chiropractic, was a magnetic healer, with a huge practice in Davenport, Iowa. He had doubts about the "germ theory" as the complete explanation of all disease. After all, if germs kill... shouldn't we all be dead? He asked "how it was that 2 brothers could work in the same shop, eat the same food, sleep in the same bed, and that one would sucumb to a disease while the other wouldn't?"
His answer was that it was not the "seed" (or germ) which was the cause of dis-ease. He felt that the "soil," or the recuperative power of the body (which he later referred to as "innate intelligence," and we now call homeostasis) was the missing component of the health equation, which defines the conitinuum between health and "death."
One day, D.D. was talking with Harvey Lillard, the man who owned the janitor service in his building. Harvey was deaf. He mentioned to D.D. that years before, while lifting a heavy weight, he felt something "snap" at the base of his neck. Shortly thereafter his hearing started to fade.
D.D. was intrigued, and asked Harvey if he could have permission to examine his back. What D.D. "felt" (we refer to this art as "palpation") was that one of the upper thoracic bones was sticking out much more that the one above or below it. He explained to Harvey that he felt that this "bone out of place" could be causing pressure on his spinal cord, and that this could be the reason that Harvey was now deaf. He convinced him to lie down on the couch, and placed his hands on the transverse processes of the bone, as D.D. explained, "wracked it back into position." When Harvey got up, he stated he could hear a horse drawn cart down in the street! This was the first thing he had heard clearly in 17 years!
Although D.D. thought he had found (one of) the causes for deafness, what he found over time was that when he corrected mis-alignments in the spine (what he termed "subluxations"), where they happened to be, it improved the nerve supply, thus the function, of whatever tissues and organs that nerve supplied.
What an auspicious way for a profession to be born. Our "no drugs, no surgery" approach has remained true to D.D.'s philosophy of the "seed and the soil." What a chiropractor accomplishes with the adjustment of the spine, is to remove the impediment to the brain's control of the body. We call that impediment, which impinges the nerves, a spinal subluxation."
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