Founder of chiropractic, born near Toronto, Canada. He moved to Iowa c.1880. Largely self-taught, he was a small businessman who became interested in alternative forms of medicines such as magnetic healing, osteopathy, and vertebral manipulation. In 1898 he founded the Palmer School of Chiropractic in Davenport, IA, the first school to train chiropractors by his system. (Chiropractic - from Greek words meaning hand-practice - was suggested to Palmer by an educated patient.) The school was not at first successful; his son, Bartlett Joshua Palmer, was one of the few graduates. In 1903 Daniel tried to establish a second centre in Portland, OR, but returned to Davenport (where his son was now running the school). In 1906 he was jailed for six months for practising medicine without a licence, and he went back to Portland and had to restrict himself to his own private practice. His Textbook of the Science, Art and Philosophy of Chiropractic (1910) attacked just about everyone who practised any kind of medicine, including his son. He returned uninvited to a school reunion and died from injuries after being struck by a car while leading a parade. His son Bartlett and grandson David Daniel persevered to make chiropractic the accepted alternative it has become.
Daniel David Palmer or DD Palmer (March 7, 1845 – October 20, 1913) was the founder of chiropractic.
Palmer was born in Port Perry, near Toronto, Canada, and at age twenty moved to the United States with his family. Palmer held various jobs as a beekeeper, school teacher, and grocery store owner, and had an interest in the various health philosophies of his day, such as magnetic healing, osteopathy, and spiritualism. Palmer practiced magnetic healing beginning in the mid-1880s in Burlington and Davenport, Iowa.
Palmer read medical journals of his time and followed developments throughout the world regarding anatomy and physiology.
Palmer founded a school based on his work that would become the Palmer School of Chiropractic in 1897. In 1906, Palmer was prosecuted under the new medical arts law in Iowa for practicing medicine without a license, and chose to goto jail instead of paying the fine. Palmer. As soon as the sale of the school was finalized, DD Palmer went to the west coast where he helped to found chiropractic schools in Oklahoma, California and Oregon.
The relationship with his son BJ was tenuous and often bitter, especially after the sale of his school. Their subsequent disagreements for the direction of the emerging field of chiropractic were evident in DD Palmer's writings.
Palmer's fundamental idea
DD Palmer's effort to find a single cause for all disease led him to say:
A subluxated vertebra… is the cause of 95 percent of all diseases.
Palmer's mysticism
D.D. Palmer regarded chiropractic as partly religious in nature, and in a letter of May 4, 1911 he said: "we must have a religious head, one who is the founder, as did Christ, Mohamed, Jo.
Historical quotes
The following quotes are from D.D. Palmer's book, The Chiropractor's Adjuster (also called The Text-Book of the Science, Art and Philosophy of Chiropractic). Palmer, 1966.
Disease: “The kind of disease 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”
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