Modern Chiropractic Care Has Roots in Ancient Times

From ancient times to modern times, the principles of chiropractic have played an important role in health care.

As long ago as the year 2650 B.C. travelers to Asia found records describing Kong Fu manipulation as a form of therapy. The Greeks were recording their successes in lower back treatments as early as 1500 B.C..

Indeed, most cultures practicing medicine have some ancient writings dealing with the spine and its effects on the body. Many cultures spoke of massaging the back or even “back walking,” a practice of laying a patient or family member on his or her belly and slowly walking barefoot up and down the person’s back. There are even records of the South American Incas using manipulation as a form of healing.

Famous Healers of the Past

Hippocrates, an ancient Greek physician who today is often referred to as “the father of medicine,” detailed many of his medical findings and procedures in a collection of about sixty treatises. In one called Manipulation and Importance of Good Health and another work called Setting Joints By Leverage, Hippocrates wrote: “Get knowledge of the spine, for this is the requisite for many diseases.”

Another famous Greek physician, Claudius Galen, wrote early in the second century “Look to the nervous system as the key to maximum health.” Galen became famous for treating a scholar named Eudemus. Galen adjusted Eudemus' neck, which appeared to reverse a paralysis of the scholar's hand and arm.

The Destruction of Knowledge

Why were these great works ignored for centuries? It can be traced back to the fall of the Roman Empire and the rampant destruction of the scholastic institutes of the time. Modern medicine was set back centuries by these acts. But all was not lost. Some of the techniques were handed down from generation to generation and there are recorded cases of European “bone setters” performing amazing acts of healing.

From the 11th through 15th centuries, “back walking” was practiced in Asia and Europe. It is also believed that European gypsies used back walking as a cure for the sick.

In much of Europe during the 1800s, medical doctors shunned the art of bone setting. But in 1867, a famous surgeon named Sir James Paget recognized the evolving art in his article in the British Medical Journal entitled, Cases That Bone Setting Cures. He described the types of spinal manipulation known at the time.

The First Chiropractic Adjustment was for Hearing Loss!

Harvey Lillard, janitor of the Ryan Building in Brady Street, Davenport, Iowa, was not a happy man. Seventeen years before, while working in a cramped, stooping position, he felt something give way in his spine. The immediate result was not only pain. He found he had lost his hearing.

Daniel David Palmer

He mentioned his problem to Daniel David Palmer, who had an office in the Ryan Building and was a keen student of anatomy and physiology. Palmer had a theory. He surmised that the spine was the highway along which ran the central nervous system. If that highway should become in need of repair and in any way restrict the constant traffic of brain impulses and orders carried by the central nervous system, other symptoms seemingly unconnected to the spinal column could result.

He examined Harvey Lillard and found that one of his vertebrae was misaligned. On September 18, 1895, he gave Lillard the first ever chiropractic adjustment. Harvey's hearing returned — and chiropractic was born.

The Years of Struggle

Daniel Palmer was not the first pioneer to find the established medical world lined up against him. In 1845, the American dentist Horace Wells first used nitrous oxide (laughing gas) to quell the pain of dentistry. He, and later proponents of anesthetics such as chloroform and ether, met sometimes violent opposition. In Vienna, Hungarian-Austrian physician Ignaz Semmelweis' insistence on hygiene at childbirth was ridiculed in 1847, in spite of the fact that it reduced maternal mortality from 9.9% to 1.5%. Twenty years later, British physician Joseph Lister used carbolic acid and phenol sprays to reduce the risk of infection during surgery. Surgeons who operated in swallow tail suits and prided themselves on the bloodiness of their aprons, derided Lister, too. So Daniel Palmer was in very good company. But he persevered and opened the first school of chiropractic in 1898. In spite of opposition from the medical profession, five of the first 15 graduates were medical doctors.

It's also worth noting that half the pupils were women, a tradition that is still maintained today in most chiropractic schools. Daniel Palmer lived to see dozens of chiropractic schools open up across America. But he was prosecuted for “practicing medicine without a license,” and some scholars believe Palmer’s death in 1913 may have been contributed to by an injury he sustained while serving a jail sentence. His statement after receiving his sentence is perhaps his epitaph, too:

“I have never considered it beneath my dignity to do anything to relieve human suffering.”

The struggle went on. Many other chiropractors were prosecuted and jailed. But the tide shifted with a landmark case involving a man named Shegato Morikubo, a graduate of Palmer's school. Morikubo was found innocent of practicing medicine without a license when a judge concluded that he was not practicing medicine — he was practicing chiropractic. That ruling represented the first recognition of chiropractic as a science in its own right.

The years of progress

It didn’t happen overnight, but recognition for the value of chiropractic grew, as did its practitioners. Palmer's mantle was taken on by his son, BJ Palmer, who refined the techniques and took over the school. He also introduced into chiropractic the new tool of X-rays, enabling more accurate diagnoses of spinal misalignments.

In the United States, where chiropractic was born and first flourished, milestone followed milestone. In 1927 chiropractic was licensed by 39 states. In 1941, John Nugent established the first chiropractic criteria; twelve chiropractic schools joined and were accredited. Politicians understood the value of this evolving approach to healing and in 1944, the G.I. Bill was expanded to allow veterans to study chiropractic after their tours of service were completed. And, in 1972, the U.S. Congress voted to make chiropractic available under Medicare.

Today in America there are approximately 50,000 practicing chiropractors. One in 15 Americans sees a chiropractor at least once a year. That’s a long way from the day in 1895 when Palmer performed the first adjustment on a man who had come to him because of a hearing loss.
 

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