Daniel David Palmer

Palmer was born in Port Perry, Ontario, Canada to Thomas Palmer and his wife Katherine McVay.[3] At age twenty he moved to the United States with his family. Palmer held various jobs such as a beekeeper, school teacher, and grocery store owner, and had an interest in the various health philosophies of his day, including magnetic healing, and spiritualism. Palmer practiced magnetic healing beginning in the mid-1880s in Burlington and Davenport, Iowa.

By 1902 the school had graduated 15 chiropractors. In 1906, Palmer was prosecuted under the new medical arts law in Iowa for practicing medicine without a license, and chose to go to jail instead of paying the fine. As a result, he spent 17 days in jail, but then elected to pay the fine. Shortly thereafter, he sold the school of chiropractic to his son, B.J. Palmer. With the help of an arbitration committee, the deal was settled for $2,196.79, various books, and some specimens from the osteological collection. As soon as the sale of the school was finalized, D.D. Palmer went to the west Coast of the United States, where he helped to found chiropractic schools in Oklahoma, California, and Oregon.

His office was located in the South Putnam Building of the Ryan Block, at the intersection of Second and Brady Streets in Davenport, Iowa. In 1896,[4] he encountered the building's janitor, Harvey Lillard, who Palmer discovered had a palpable lump in his back. Lillard's hearing was severely impaired and Palmer theorized that the lump and his hearing deficits were related. Palmer then treated Lillard and claimed to have successfully restored his hearing,[5] a claim which was influential in Chiropractic history.

This account of how the first adjustment came to be would later be countered by Harvey's daughter who recounts a different interaction between the two men, as told to her by her father. She claims that Palmer overheard Harvey telling a joke just outside his office, and joined the group to catch the end of it. Upon hearing the punchline, Palmer heartily slapped Lillard on the back. A few days later Lillard remarked that his hearing had improved since the incident, inspiring Palmer to pursue vertebral treatment as a means to cure disease. [6]

In 1870 Palmer was '"probably" a student of metaphysics, became a student of science in 1890 while practicing magnetic healing and after "discovering" chiropractic in 1895 attempted to merge science and metaphysics.[7] In 1896, D.D. Palmer's first descriptions and underlying philosophy of chiropractic was strikingly similar to Andrew Still's principles of osteopathy established a decade earlier.[8] Both described the body as a "machine" whose parts could be manipulated to produce a drugless cure. Both professed the use of spinal manipulation on joint dysfunction to improve health; chiropractors dubbed this manipulable lesion "subluxation" which interfered with the nervous system whereas osteopaths dubbed the spinal lesion "somatic dysfunction" which affected the circulatory system. Palmer drew further distinctions by noting that he was the first to use short-lever manipulative techniques using the spinous process and transverse processes as mechanical levers to spinal dysfunction/subluxation.[4] Soon after, osteopaths began an American wide campaign proclaimed that chiropractic was a bastardized form of osteopathy and sought licensure to differentiate the two groups.[8] Although Palmer initially denied being trained by osteopathic medicine founder A.T. Still, in 1899 in papers held at the Palmer College of Chiropractic he wrote:

"Some years ago I took an expensive course in Electropathy, Cranial Diagnosis, Hydrotherapy, Facial Diagnosis. Later I took Osteopathy [which] gave me such a measure of confidence as to almost feel it unnecessary to seek other sciences for the mastery of curable disease. Having been assured that the underlying philosophy of chiropractic is the same as that of osteopathy...Chiropractic is osteopathy gone to seed."[7]

His theories revolved around the concept that altered nerve flow was the cause of all disease, and that misaligned spinal vertebrae had an effect on the nerve flow. He postulated that restoring these vertebrae to their proper alignment would restore health.

"A subluxated vertebra ... is the cause of 95 percent of all diseases ... The other five percent is caused by displaced joints other than those of the vertebral column."[5]

The relationship with his son B.J. Palmer was tenuous and often bitter, especially after the sale of his school. Their subsequent disagreements regarding the direction of the emerging field of chiropractic were evident in D.D. Palmer's writings. Even the circumstances surrounding his death were postulated to be attributable to B.J. Court records reflect that during a founders day parade in Davenport in August 1913, D.D. was marching on foot when he was struck from behind by a car driven by B.J. He died in Los Angeles, California on October 20, 1913. The official cause of death was typhoid fever, though some believe it was the consequence of his injuries.[15] The courts exonerated B.J. of any responsibility for his father's death. Chiropractic historian Joseph C. Keating, Jr. has described the attempted patricide of D.D. Palmer as a "myth" and "absurd on its face" and cites an eyewitness who recalled that D.D. was not struck by B.J.'s car, but rather, had stumbled. He also says that "Joy Loban, DC, executor of D.D.'s estate, voluntarily withdrew a civil suit claiming damages against B.J. Palmer, and that several grand juries repeatedly refused to bring criminal charges against the son."[16][17]

Weeks later D.D. Palmer died in Los Angeles. "It seems more likely that his death was a direct result of injuries caused by his son."[15] They had become bitter rivals over the leadership of chiropractic. B.J. Palmer resented his father for the way he treated his family, stating that his father beat three of his children with straps and was so much involved in chiropractic that "he hardly knew he had any children".[15] D.D. Palmer's attending physicians were persuaded to change their opinions about the main cause of death D.D. claimed that his son B.J. struck him with his car.[18]

• Chiropractic History Archives: D.D. Palmer
• D.D. Palmer's Lifeline