Daniel David Palmer

Daniel David Palmer (March 7, 1845 – October 20, 1913) was a Canadian-born American spiritualist and activist best known for creating chiropractic. Palmer was born in Pickering Township, Canada West, but emigrated to the United States in 1865. He was also an avid proponent of pseudoscientific alternative medicine such as magnetic healing. Palmer opposed anything he thought to be associated with mainstream medicine, such as vaccination. His parents were Thomas Palmer and Katherine McVay, and his great-great-grandparents were from the United States. He received formal education until the age of 11 years, at the Audley School, and was subsequently raised in Port Perry. Palmer practiced magnetic healing beginning in the mid-1880s in Burlington and Davenport, Iowa.

Founding of chiropractic

In 1895, Palmer was practicing magnetic healing from an office in Davenport when he encountered the building's janitor, Harvey Lillard. Lillard had a severe hearing impairment, and Palmer suggested that a noticeable lump on his back might be linked to it. Palmer then manipulated Lillard's back and claimed to have successfully restored his hearing, which would go on to be an influential claim in chiropractic history.

This account of how the first adjustment occurred would later be countered by Lillard's daughter, who recalls a different interaction between the two men as told to her by her father. She claims that Palmer overheard her father telling a joke just outside his office and joined the group to catch the end of it. Upon hearing the punchline, Palmer heartily slapped Lillard on the back. A few days later, Lillard remarked that his hearing had improved since the incident, inspiring Palmer to pursue vertebral manipulation as a means to cure illness.

In 1896, D. D. Palmer's first descriptions of underlying chiropractic philosophy were strikingly similar to Andrew Taylor Still's principles of osteopathy established a decade earlier. Both described the body as a "machine" whose parts could be manipulated to produce a drugless cure. Both professions advocated using spinal manipulation to treat joint dysfunction and enhance health. Chiropractors referred to this manipulable "lesion" as "vertebral subluxation," which they claimed interfered with the nervous system. In contrast, osteopaths labeled the spinal lesion as "somatic dysfunction," which they believed affected the circulatory system. Palmer drew further distinctions by noting that he was the first to use short-lever manipulative techniques using the spinous process and transverse processes as mechanical levers to spinal dysfunction (i.e., "subluxation").

In 1906, Palmer was prosecuted under the new medical arts law in Iowa for practicing medicine without a license, and chose to go to jail instead of paying the fine. As a result, he spent 17 days in jail, but then elected to pay the fine. Shortly thereafter, he sold the school of chiropractic to his son. After the sale of the school was finalized, D. D. Palmer went to the Western United States, where he helped to found chiropractic schools in Oklahoma, California, and Oregon.

Palmer's beliefs Spiritualism As an active spiritist, D. D. Palmer said he "received chiropractic from the other world" from a deceased physician named Dr. Jim Atkinson.

According to his son B. J. Palmer, "Father often attended the annual Mississippi Valley Spiritualists Camp Meeting where he first claimed to receive messages from Dr. Jim Atkinson on the principles of chiropractic."

Anti-vaccination Like his son, Palmer was anti-vaccines:

Quotes Disease: "The kind of dis-ease depends upon what nerves are too tense or too slack." Chiropractic for intellectual abnormalities: "Chiropractors correct abnormalities of the intellect as well as those of the body."' Life and religion: "I have answered the time-worn question—what is life?": "The dualistic system—spirit and body—united by intellectual life—the soul—is the basis of this science of biology" "There can be no healing without Teaching ..." "There is a vast difference between treating effects and adjusting the causes." Louvenia Landers, m. 1874 – d. 1884 Even the circumstances surrounding his death were postulated to be attributable to B. J.

Court records reflect that during a parade in Davenport in August 1913, D. D. was marching on foot when he was struck from behind by a car driven by B. J. He died in Los Angeles, California, on October 20, 1913. The official cause of death was typhoid fever, though some believe it was the consequence of his injuries.