The General Situation

Chiropractic, which is currently the only well known method of structural healing that has a major presence and is not subordinate to medical doctors or the medical machine of drugging people no matter what is wrong with them (not a cynical statement but on inspection, true data), was discovered in the same way most herbs and other helpful useful treatments were discovered. One person (Dr. Palmer) encountered another person (Mr. Lillard) who had a problem they wanted to correct. Dr. Palmer listened to the history, that Mr. Lillard had gone deaf after hearing a pop in his back while lifting something. The history included a comment about a hard lump that developed in Mr. Lillard’s spine where he heard the pop. Dr. Palmer put two and two together – that a bone popped out of place and Mr. Lillard went deaf – and thought his hearing would return if it was pushed back into place. Dr. Palmer pushed the bone back into position and Mr. Lillard did get his hearing back. Two and two did add up to four. (Changes in sight, hearing and other senses are commonplace in offices of effective biostructural healers - with no medicine or surgery.)

That sequence of discovery was not really that much different from the discovery of antibiotics or other natural remedies – people discovered germs seem to cause illness, someone working in a lab noticed germs don’t grow near green mold and figured there must be something in the mold that kills germs and that it could probably be used to help fight infection, and etc. (penicillin is made by mold).

Dr. Palmer went on to theorize that out-of-place bones pinched nerves which caused body malfunctions resulting in all different types of health problems. He was pleased when his experiments demonstrated that improving the mechanics of the spine led to improvement in regards to back and neck pain but more importantly, it improved health. Even things like heart problems and other internal disorders not thought to be related to body mechanics.

These theories were not the imaginings of some 1800's “wacko”. Examination of his writings shows Dr. Palmer was an up-to-date, modern researcher for his time period (late 1800’s – early 1900’s). Medical doctors of that time were still using bloodletting as a major method of treatment. Dr. Palmer deplored that approach and the using of “...tinctures and lotions of all known vegetables and crawling creatures,” as well as bleeding and other mystical healing. Dr. Palmer wanted an answer to “...why one person was ailing and his associate, eating at the same table, working in the same shop, at the same bench, was not.” He took good histories and kept good records of his cases and research from which he drew his conclusions.

Palmer’s therapy (chiropractic, Chiro - by hand, practic - doing a thing) worked well on many, and for much more than back or neck pain. However, it did not work consistently and predictably. That was a problem Dr. Palmer recognized as a lack of information on what was happening with the patients. At that time he just did not have enough information to definitively figure what to do with each individual patient. He also recognized that that situation should improve with time and research. That others had not contributed anything to Chiropractic over the following years but uninvestigated theories, which tended to be illogical and inconsistent with known observations galled Dr. Palmer terribly. This is made plain the preface he wrote (1910) to his book, The Chiropractic Adjuster in which Palmer noted such things were not and should not be part of Chiropractic as it was science based and many of these theories were inconsistent with the physical observations anyone could make and thus foolish.

D.D. Palmer noted that many incorrect things were (and still are) taught, including some added by his son B.J. Palmer, that Dr. Palmer noted in print were “...errors which, through ignorance, have been taught and accepted as integral and necessary parts of Chiropractic.”

There have been several attempts to improve on the basic of chiropractic which is: A bone or bones go out of place preventing the body from working properly which allows infection and disease. Push it into place and the body will work correctly and heal itself. The first improvement occurred in the early 1900’s – the institution of a thorough education in anatomy so the chiropractic doctor would know what bone positions were supposed to be when s/he went looking for things out of place. That improved things greatly. The next occurred in the mid 1900’s – the use of x-rays to measure the spine and determine what was out of position. While that also improved Chiropractors’ ability to help, that is also where chiropractic got itself stuck.

Over the last century, experience has shown that basic chiropractic is actually a very workable theory. Millions recover from diseases and muscle and bone pains said to be “incurable” every year. Even the medical profession has come around to admitting it. Yet chiropractic treatment still misses its goal far too often.

continued on page 2...

top