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First Chiropractic Adjustment was given by Daniel David "D.D."
Palmer to Harvey Lillard on September 18th, 1895, in
Davenport, Iowa, on the 4th floor of the Ryan Building at the
corner of Second and Brady Streets.
For nine years prior to the First Chiropractic Adjustment, Palmer
was a magnetic healer, a hands on therapy which was also practiced
by many medical practitioners of the era.
The First Chiropractic Patient was an African American man named,
Harvey Lillard.
Mr. Lillard was
the owner/operator of the janitorial company that maintained the
building where Palmer had his office.
Lillard had told Palmer that he had suffered from back pain and
that he had lost most of his hearing. Lillard added that he could
no longer hear sounds like the clip-clopping of the horses just
outside the window, or the ticking of his watch. Palmer asked
Lillard how he had lost his hearing.
Lillard replied, that seventeen years prior, while bent over,
in a stooped position, he heard something "pop" in his spine and
immediately suffered a lost of most of his hearing.
A keen student of human anatomy and physiology, Palmer examined
Lillard, and found a tender lump on the spine between his shoulders.
He recognized the lump as a badly misaligned vertebra, and reasoned
that since it had occurred when the man went deaf, restoring the
vertebra to its proper position might also restore Lillard’s hearing.
He presented his theory to Lillard and requested that he be allowed
to try and realign the vertebra. Having known Palmer for years,
and having seen the great number of people who sought his help,
Lillard agreed to let him work on him. |
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The Father of Chiropractic
Dr. Daniel David "D.D." Palmer
1844-1913
One question
was always uppermost
in my mind in my search for the cause
of disease. I desired to know why one person was
ailing and his associate, eating at the same table,
working in the same shop, at the same bench,
was not Why? What difference was there in the
two persons that caused one to have pneumonia,
catarrh, typhoid or rheumatism, while his partner,
similarly situated, escaped? Why? This question
had worried thousands for centuries and was
answered on September 18th, 1895.
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Palmer
reasoned that the body was controlled through the brain and nerve
system by thousands of messages sent every second to control each
structure and function within the body, and that pressure on the
nerves could distort and block these messages as they traveled
from the brain, to the spinal cord and on to the body. Palmer
felt that Lillard's hearing loss was due to a blockage of the
spinal nerves which control the inner ear. Ultimately, this nerve
blockage and bone misalignment "vertebral subluxations",
lessoned the body's ability to function by disrupting communication
over the nerve system.
When Palmer corrected the misalignment by pushing the vertebrae
back into place, the nerve pathways were reopened and thus Lillard's
hearing was restored.
After the adjustment Palmer sited, "There was nothing accidental
about this, as it was accomplished with an object in view, and
the result expected was obtained. There was nothing crude about
this adjustment; it was specific."
Although the act of replacing vertebrae into their proper position
had been practiced for thousands of years, Palmer was the first
to articulate the connection between the interference these misaligned
bones caused to the nerve system and interference to the functioning
of the body.
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The
First Chiropractic Patient
Mr. Harvey
Lillard
1856 -1925 |
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Palmer was
so impressed by his discovery that he asked a friend and patient,
Rev. Samuel Weed, to help him name
it. After careful study, Rev. Weed came up with the Greek words
"cheiros" (hand),
and "praktikus"
(action) and together the words are interpreted as "done by
hand" = Chiropractic.
Chiropractic was born. Palmer began checking other patients
for evidence of misaligned vertebrae and adjusting them. He
quickly discovered that many of their ailments were alleviated
altogether, after his efforts to reposition the bones. From
these observations, and from his own study and knowledge of
health, Palmer concluded that good health is the normal, natural
state of the body.
When Palmer first opened his office he rented three rooms in
the Ryan Building. A few months after the First Chiropractic
Adjustment, he added two more rooms. It was not long before
he was using eight rooms. By 1892, his business had so increased
that he was using eighteen rooms. These rooms were located on
the second and third floors. He later exchanged the eighteen
rooms for twenty on the front half of the fourth floor. Business
continued to increase until he occupied the entire floor of
forty rooms.
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Dr.
Bartlett Joshua "B.J." Palmer
1882-1961 |
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Palmer
knew that he had found how to get the body to heal itself without
the use of drugs or surgery, but he did not want to share it with
the world, rather he wanted to keep it as a family trade secret.
His son, Bartlett Joshua "B.J." Palmer, (1882-1961)
decided on letting the world know about the discovery his father
had made and tried to keep secret. B.J. talked his father into
starting a school for people to learn the art of chiropractic.
Two years after the First Chiropractic Adjustment, Dr. David Daniel
Palmer renamed his clinic the Palmer School & Infirmary of Chiropractic
and accepted his first students. In 1898, he founded the Palmer
School for Chiropractic in Davenport, Iowa.
Since Dr. DD Palmer's First Chiropractic Adjustment, the Art,
Philosophy and Science of Chiropractic has grown and progressed
significantly. Today, advanced chiropractic diagnostic procedures,
sophisticated equipment, scientific research, and the growing
acceptance among other health care professionals makes chiropractic
the world's fastest growing health care profession.
Today there are over 60,000 practicing Doctors of Chiropractic
in the United States. |
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Source:
The Chiropractor’s Adjuster, published in 1910
D. D. Palmer's Lifeline, by Joseph C. Keating Jr. Ph.D. |
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