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BJ Palmer (The Father of Chiropractic)

THE DISCOVERY OF CHIROPRACTIC

D.D. Palmer

Dr. David Daniel Palmer was a practicing magnetic healer in the 1890’s who practiced in Davenport, Iowa. There was an African American janitor who worked in the office where Dr. Palmer practiced named Harvey Lillard. Mr. Lillard had been deaf for seventeen years and was so deaf that he could not even hear the wagons bump along the brick streets. Dr. Palmer asked Mr. Lillard how he had lost his hearing, and Mr. Lillard replied that while he was bent over, in a stooped position, he heard something “pop” in his spine and immediately had lost his hearing. Dr. Palmer was a very reasoning man and decided to examine Mr. Lillard’s spine to see if he could determine what had caused the deafness. He found a noticeably large bump on Mr. Lillard’s spine at the 2nd cervical level. He determined that perhaps this large bump on Mr. Lillard’s spine had caused Mr. Lillard’s deafness and decided to try to reduce that bump by making a thrust upon it. There had to be a connection between the bump and the loss of hearing. Dr. Palmer placed Mr. Lillard down on his stomach and gave the bump a hard shove. After a series of three shoves, the bump was reduced - Mr. Lillard’s hearing returned!

D.D. Palmer reasoned - if I restored the hearing in Harvey Lillard by reducing the bump in his spine, why not reduce the bumps in other people’s spines and restore their hearing? So he started advertising the he could restore hearing by reducing bumps on people’s spines. He started watching and plotting where spinal nerves went, what organs and tissue cells they innervated. He developed his own anatomical charts, made notes of what was happening to different individuals' problems and found that he was even curing problems that were not deafness related. He started looking to the spine for the cause of all diseases.

Dr. D.D. Palmer knew that he had stumbled on how to get the body to heal itself, but he didn’t want to share it with the world; rather he wanted to keep it a family secret. However, his son, B.J. (Bartlett Joshua) Palmer, decided to spread the word to the world about this discovery that his father had made. B.J. talked his father D.D. into starting a school for people to learn about the art of Chiropractic. D.D. opened “The Palmer Infirmary and Chiropractic School” in 1897, but since he had no students, he stated the opening of the school was in 1898 (when he had two students). B.J. was a student in the 1902 class of four students. After graduating, B.J. practiced in several cities. His father asked him to come home and help run the infirmary and school, which B.J. did. B.J. later bought out his father’s interests and D.D. moved to Los Angeles, California, where he lived the remainder of his life.

Dr. B.J. Palmer

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CHIROPRACTIC

B.J. worked avidly at developing his school in Davenport, Iowa. There were many trials and tribulations, not to mention arrests and legal battles. He went through financial difficulties and then made a lot of money through the various enterprises that he was into. He started a new business in the fledgling radio industry. In fact, one of the largest radio stations in the Midwest carries the call letters “WOC”, meaning the “Wonders of Chiropractic”. The most famous of the people to ever work for him was Ronald Reagan, the man to become a President of the United States.

Among other things, B.J. developed a research clinic, a sanitarium for the mentally ill, a TV station, a whole new vocabulary for the Chiropractic science, analytical instruments for the new Chiropractic profession, and adjusting tables. He wrote many books, and one of the most disdainful things he had to do was to put paper into a typewriter when he was in the middle of a thought. He went to a typewriter company and told them he wanted them to build him an electric typewriter (the first) that would hold a roll of paper. He could then type several feet of paper, take it to his secretary and have her put it on normal size paper. He took a new invention, the x-ray, and developed the techniques for taking certain views that would help the Chiropractor see the vertebrae that were out of position. Some of these views, which are unique to Chiropractors, are referred to by medical radiologists as “those Chiropractic views” but are helpful to Chiropractors and medics alike. The first full spinal x-ray (that is a full view of the human spine on one film) was taken by Dr. B.J. Palmer, not medics. He coined the word spineographer for chiropractors. This is our specialty – x-raying the spine for the correct way of replacing a vertebra to its normal position.

Some of the sayings that B.J. put out were “As Sterling is to Silver, Palmer is to Chiropractic” and “From the Palmer College Fountain Head, flows the pure water of Chiropractic thinking.” There is a small booklet printed of the sayings that B.J. had painted over all the walls of the school, i.e. “Enter to learn – go forth to serve the sick” and “Prescriptions are written in Latin, but the bills come in plain English”.

B.J.’s private clinic was a marvel. A student had to first intern in the student clinic. If a student completed working with a certain number of patients, he could then work in Dr. Palmer’s private clinic. I feel very fortunate to be a patient, friend and student of Dr. Clarence D. Jenson, Chiropractor, who is one of the last students to work in B.J. Palmer’s private clinic. In B.J.’s clinic he got to see many of the worst types of illnesses. Patients had been sent from all over the world to B.J.: patients who couldn’t walk, who couldn’t function in any way.

B.J. was getting a fantastic percentage of patients well who were the “incurables.” He employed medical doctors to work in his clinic who would run their tests to verify the hometown doctor's diagnosis. He would run his Chiropractic tests, give the patient Chiropractic adjustments, then the medical doctors would run their tests over again to verify the results that Dr. Palmer was obtaining through Chiropractic methods. B.J. really was a tireless worker and a mental giant in a very small body. Dr Jenson says that he doubts that he stood 5’5”.

After years of experimenting, documenting and analyzing, B.J. came up with the Palmer HIO (hole in one) system. This is the system that you will be getting in my office and is, in my opinion, the best system there is in Chiropractic. We do most of our work on the first two vertebrae in the spine (neck area). These are the most freely moveable, smallest vertebrae and the ONLY place where the brain stem is complete, and when out of place (subluxated) they can interfere with the transmission of mental impulses to ANY place in your body!! These are the vertebrae which Chiropractic research has found to be the culprits causing most of the patient’s health problems. There is no pain associated with a Palmer HIO adjustment.

Dr. B.J. Palmer made a lot of enemies along his road of life because he would not tolerate the mixing of Chiropractic with that of medicine. I feel that a good Chiropractor does not use anything but straight Chiropractic methods, i.e. finding subluxated vertebrae (vertebrae that are out of place) which are producing either spinal cord pressure or spinal nerve pressure and adjusting these vertebrae back to their normal positions. This gets rid of the nerve interference and lets the patients' Innate Intelligence heal their own bodies. This is what we mean by the “natural way to health” - you are not using drugs to fool the mind into thinking you are feeling better than you are. Using drugs has never cured a dis-ease! If you were to collect all the daily newspaper articles on drugs you would consistently find that yesterday’s miracle drug is today’s failure, killing many people!

B.J. was very adamant about adjusting only when there was a nerve interference displayed on instrumentation and not over-adjusting the patient. Also, he was strict about using X-rays to determine the position of the spinal vertebrae and not relying on hand examinations of the spine, which were found to be inaccurate with scientific study. Dr. Palmer found that resting the patient was crucial to the patient holding the adjustment. That is why we rest you after your very specific spinal adjustment.