History

Daniel David Palmer started chiropractic back in 1895 when Harvey Lillard, a janitor of the Ryan Building in Brady Street, Davenport, Iowa USA, approached him about a problem he was having. 17 years prior he had sustained a spinal injury, which rendered him deaf.

Daniel Palmer had a theory. He surmised that the spine was the highway along which ran the central nervous system. If that highway should become in need of repair and in any way restrict the constant traffic of brain impulses and orders carried by the central nervous system, other symptoms seemingly unconnected to the spinal column could result.
He examined Lillard and found that one of his vertebrae was misaligned. On September 18th 1895, he gave Harvey Lillard the first ever Chiropractic adjustment. Harvey's hearing returned...and Chiropractic was born.

Daniel Palmer lived to see dozens of Chiropractic schools open up across America. He died in 1913, his death possibly contributed to by an injury he sustained whilst serving his jail sentence. Many other Chiropractors were prosecuted and jailed. A landmark case was when Shegato Morikubo DC, a graduate of Palmer's school, was found innocent of practicing medicine without a license. The judge decided that he was not practicing medicine...he was practicing Chiropractic. This was the first recognition of Chiropractic as a science in its own right.

In America, where Chiropractic was born and first flourished, milestone followed milestone.
1913: Kansas was the first state to license Chiropractors.
1941: The first standards were set up to accredit Chiropractic schools in the USA.
1944: The GI Bill of Rights made grants available for returning veterans to study Chiropractic.
1972: The US Congress voted to make Chiropractic available under Medicare.

Today in America there are over 50,000 practicing Chiropractors treating 15-20 million patients. One in 15 Americans sees a Chiropractor at least once a year.