How Was Chiropractic Discovered?

Wednesday, November 23, 2011 by admin.

For centuries, physicians have valued the healing power of spinal adjustments.  If we study the history of healing, we would find some form of chiropractic practiced in nearly every culture in the world.  Evidence suggests that spinal care predates medical care and has been one of the favored healing systems during most of mankind’s civilized existence. 

Hipporactes, the “Father of Medicine” stressed various natural remedies including spinal adjustments as a means of curing diseases and maintaining good health.  Galen, another famous physician of his day, correctly diagnosed a patient’s problem with numbness in his fingers, as arising from impinged nerves in the man’s neck.  He became an advocate of spinal adjustments as well, when after adjusting his patient’s spine, the numbness disappeared.

In Japan, the art of “back-walking” has been practiced for centuries to give relief from stress and sickness.  In hawaii, “lomi-lomi”, a form of spinal manipulation was used to heal the sick.  In India, “yoga” concentrated greatly upon keeping the spinal column flexible.  In Europe and Asia, it was practiced as “bone setting”.  Unfortunately, during the Dark Ages, most physicians preferred chemical concoctions over the spinal manipulative arts.  The practice was kept alive mostly by traveling folk healers.  However, in the early nineteenth century, mainstream medicine “discovered” the concept of ’spinal irritation’ and that many different diseases may arise from spinal problems.  The only diagnostic sign was “tenderness upon pressure” over a vertebra, which is also one of the tests chiropractors use.  But instead of adjusting the out-of-position vertebra, they applied leeches and cautery to the skin over the tender spinal areas (ouch!).

In 1895, Dr. D.D. Palmer from Davenport, Iowa, was trying to help his deaf janitor regain his hearing.  The man had been involved in a small accident 18 years earlier and felt something “give” in his back.  Shortly after the accident his hearing nearly disappeared totally.  Dr. Palmer examined the man’s spine and found what appeared to be a misaligned vertebra.  He gave him a “hand treatment” (what he originally called his spinal adjustments), and was convinced he had discovered a cure for deafness.

People with all kinds of health problems started visiting Dr. Palmer.  They reported being cured of a lot of conditions.  He was getting well-known far and wide as the discoverer of a powerful new drugless way of curing people.  He took the Greek word for “hand (”cheiros”) and “done by” (”practos”) and put them together (one of his first patients was a Greek language scholar).  He then founded a school of chiropractic to teach this healing method to others.

 Today, Chiropractors can be found throughout the world.  There are chiropractic colleges not only in the United States, but also in Canada, Japan, England and Australia.  Chriropractic has become the largest   non-medical healing art in the world today.

{culled from published material presented by

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