Chiropractic History / D.D. Palmer's Forgotten Theories of Chiropractic

submitted by Dr. Gary Farr Last Updated April, 18, 2002

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D.D. Palmer's Forgotten Theories of Chiropractic

A Presentation to the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College
February 18, 1995
Joseph C. Keating, Jr., Ph.D.,
President Association for the History of Chiropractic
1000 Brady Street, Davenport, IA 52803 USA

Summary

Chiropractors have gained some credibility in recent years as providers of quality health care services for patients with disorders of the musculoskeletal system. However, the chiropractic profession has long been and continues to be ridiculed for advocating the broader clinical utility of manipulative procedures, for example, for patients with cancer, diseases of the viscera, cardiovascular disorders and psychiatric conditions. The persistence of these broader claims despite the absence of scientific evidence is partly attributable to dogmatic adherence to rigid, unchanging, and largely unchallenged theories of disease causation (e.g., subluxation) and intervention. Indeed, some chiropractors take pride in the supposedly unchanging character of chiropractic paradigms.

Contrary to the notion that chiropractic theories and methods were fixed in 1895 by the founder, D.D. Palmer, a good deal of theoretical evolution was not completed until 1904. The earliest available literature published by D.D. Palmer (1896-1902) has long been hidden from the profession, but is now available through the efforts of archivists at Palmer College in Davenport, Iowa. These early publications hint at how Old Dad Chiro's first theory of chiropractic emerged from his magnetic healing practices, and reveal that Palmer's first theory of chiropractic was as broad as, although not synonymous with, the osteopathic theories of A.T. Still. The founder of chiropractic was initially quite concerned with relieving circulatory obstructions, which, like the osseo-neural lesions later known as chiropractic subluxations, were thought to produce friction and inflammation.

Despite the vital-magnetic background which led him to chiropractic, Palmer's first theory of chiropractic offered mechanical rather than spiritual metaphors; the human was construed as a machine that would operate smoothly, without friction, if all parts were in their proper place. Not until 1904 do distinctions between "innate" vs. "educated" nerves appear in his publications, and not until 1906 does "innate" become a distinct personality, Innate Intelligence. Old Dad Chiro may not have equated Innate Intelligence with Universal Intelligence (God) until after his conviction and incarceration in Scott County Jail in 1906. Eventually, his religious platform was offered to provide legal protection to chiropractors under the religious exemption clauses in many medical practice acts.

Further conceptual development continued until Palmer's death in October, 1913, and is reflected in his 1910 volume, The Chiropractor's Adjuster and his posthumously published The Chiropractor (1914). Palmer's later writings conflict rather sharply in some respects with his seminal chiropractic ideas and with those of many of his rivals (such as A.P. Davis, MD, DO, DC, ND, B.J. Palmer, DC, Solon Massey Langworthy, DC and Oakley G. Smith, DC, DN). Palmer argued strenuously that nerves are not "pinched" in the intervertebral foramina and that the foramina became widened (rather than narrowed or obstructed) when the articular surfaces of vertebra were misaligned. His later ideas about "nerve interference" posited that pressure on a nerve (rather than pinching) caused an increase in the tension of the nerve, which in term altered the vibrational frequency of neural transmission. An accelerated rate of nerve impulses (rather than a restriction of nerve flow) was believed to cause excessive heat in the nerve and in the end-organs served by the affected nerve. For D.D. Palmer this increased heat was manifest as inflammation and tissue necrosis. Palmer also allowed that subluxation might decrease tension in nerves, with the end result of inadequate neural transmission producing hard tumors. The founder believed that inflammation had no beneficial effects and was always deleterious; more than anything else his second theory of chiropractic is a theory of inflammation.

This review attempts to illustrate and chronologically organize some of this theoretical metamorphosis, and suggests that an understanding of how early chiropractic thought evolved is relevant to the chiropractic profession today. Available for inspection at the lecture will be photoreductions of Palmer's advertisements from before the turn of the century and many of his subsequent writings.

*Underlined items are books rather than periodicals

This information was obtained from Joseph C. Keating, Jr., Ph.D from the Chiropractic History Archives.