The Chiropractic Story

The Founder of Chiropractic

"I have never considered it beneath my dignity to do anything to 

relieve human suffering."

Dr. Daniel David Palmer (1845-1913) 

The Chiropractic Story

The principle of chiropractic was discovered September 18, 1895 by Dr. Daniel Palmer in Davenport, Iowa. On that day, Palmer was in his office carrying on a shouted conversation with the deaf janitor in the building, Harvey Lillard.

Lillard was explaining in shouts to Palmer that, about 17 years earlier, while working in a cramped, stooped position, something “popped” in his back. Since that time, his hearing had become progressively worse.

Dr. Palmer, a curious, intelligent man, examined Lillard’s back and found a painful, misaligned vertebra at the spot where Lillard had described feeling the pain. He suspected a connection between this misaligned vertebra and Lillard’s impaired hearing. He reasoned that is something had gone wrong in his back and had caused deafness, the correction of the misaligned vertebra should bring back Lillard’s hearing.

Using his hands, Palmer repositioned the vertebra with a gentle thrust to Lillard’s back. Lillard’s hearing improved immediately. During the next few days, Palmer continued the treatments on Lillard’s spine. Within a week, Lillard was able to hear as well as anybody and was telling anybody who would listen about Dr. Palmer’s hand treatements.

Dr. Palmer’s fame quickly spread as he proved that the hand treatments were effective in all sorts of disease disorders and dysfunctions. He became a world-renowned specialist in the spine and nerve system.