Imagine this. The year was 1895, the same year that x-rays were discovered. You probably didn’t know that, but now you do. At that particular time, our health care was provided by a diversity of unregulated professions, including osteopaths, magnetic healers and “medical” doctors. Back in the day, most medical education consisted of working as an “apprentice” for a “medical” doctor, and learning the craft by observation. Kind of like doing a residency now, I guess. Anyway, here’s the rest of the story.
D.D. Palmer, the Father of Chiropractic, was a “magnetic healer,” with a practice in Davenport, Iowa. He had doubts about the “germ theory” as the complete explanation for the cause of all disease. After all, if germs kill… shouldn’t we all be dead? He asked anyone that didn’t believe him: “How was it that 2 brothers could work in the same shop, eat the same food, sleep in the same bed, and that one would succumb to a BAD disease while the other one would stay healthy and never get sick?”
His answer was that it was not just the “seed” (or germ) which was the cause of people’s dis-eases and he thought that the “soil”, or the recuperative power of the body (which he later referred to as “innate intelligence”, and we now call homeostasis) was the missing component of the equation.
One day D.D. was in his office and he was talking with Harvey Lillard, the janitor guy in his building. Unfortunately, Harvey was deaf and had been for years. He mentioned to D.D. that years ago, he was lifting a heavy weight, and he felt something “snap” at the base of his neck. It was several weeks later, but his hearing started to fade.
D.D. was intrigued, and asked Harvey if he could examine his back. Harvey said, “Okay, no problem.” What D.D. “felt” (doctors of chiropractic refer to this art as “palpation”) was that one of the upper back bones was sticking out much more than the one above or below it. He explained to Harvey that he felt that this “bone out of place” could be causing pressure on his spinal cord, and that this could be the reason that Harvey was now deaf.
He convinced Harvey to lie down on the couch, (he did not have a chiropractic table) and placed his hands on the transverse processes of the bone and, as D.D. explained in his books, “wracked it back into position”. When Harvey got up, he stated that he could hear a horse drawn cart down in the street! This was the first thing he had heard clearly in 17 years!
Although DD thought he had found (one of) the causes for deafness, what he found over time was that when he corrected mis-alignments in Harvey’s spine (what he termed a “subluxation”), where ever they happened to be, it improved the nerve supply, thus the function, of whatever tissues and organs that particular nerve(s) supplied.
What I do here at the office is remove the impediment or blockage to the brain’s control of the body. We call that impingement to the nerves a “spinal subluxation”. Don’t forget to make sure that you’re checked regularly because things do happen without any pain in your spine, and you’re the only one that can help yourself, so make sure you call now.