The Story of Daniel David Palmer

Daniel David Palmer, the father of modern chiropractic, was born on 7 March 1845 near Toronto, Canada. He was the eldest son of Thomas and Catherine Palmer. The young David was such a highly intelligent child that he completed eighth grade by the time he was eleven. The Palmers moved to the United States in 1856 as their grocery business in Toronto failed. However David and his younger brother Thomas were left behind. The two boys had to leave school and start working in a factory.

In 1865 the brothers joined their parents in Iowa. David took up a teaching job there. It was in Illinois that he got interested in spirituality and magnetic healing. By the late 1880s, David Palmer was a successful magnetic healer. Magnetic healing uses the principle that the human body is surrounded by a magnetic field. You can influence this field to heal diseases.

Palmer was not satisfied with simply repeating what he had learned. He wanted to find better healing ways. On 18 September 1895, he met Harvey Lillard. Lillard, a janitor, had lost his hearing about seventeen years back. This happened after he felt something pop in his back one day when he was in a strained position. Palmer found a bump on his back and was able to readjust it to the right place using his hands. Lilliard was surprised to find his hearing restored.

Palmer’s second patient was a person with a heart problem. Palmer was successful in helping this person, and thus was the start of chiropractic as it is known today. As Palmer could treat two very different problems by adjusting the vertebrae, he reasoned that a whole lot of illnesses could be the result of strain on nerves passing through the spine.

Palmer started the Palmer School of Magnetic Cure in Davenport in 1896 at Iowa. It was renamed as Palmer School of Chiropractic in 1904. Soon he had students from all over the United States in his school. Palmer’s son Bartlett Joshua (B.J.) Palmer was one of the early students to graduate from the school. B. J. Palmer later made many important contributions to chiropractic and became as famous as his father.

Palmer and other chiropractors had a difficult time in those years, as the local government charged them with practicing medicine without license. However the government later admitted that they were not practicing medicine but only what they had studied, namely chiropractic.

In the 1900’s, D. D. Palmer took to traveling along the West Coast to educate more people on chiropractic. B. J Palmer took over the management of the school. It was B.J. Palmer who introduced X Rays (1910) and other modern diagnostic tools in chiropractic.

D. D. Palmer moved to Los Angeles in 1911 and lived there till his death on 20 October, 1913. It was here that he completed his two important books The Science of Chiropractic and The Chiropractor’s Adjuster.

Today chiropractic is one of the world’s largest health care systems. It has gained respect from followers of other systems. A lot of research has been happening and tools from other systems have been brought in. David Palmer’s mission to end suffering is today safe in the hands of 60,000 chiropractors and many more students and researchers all over the world.

-Uma