Skip to main content
Ingenium Logo

You are leaving IngeniumCanada.org

✖


This link leads to an external website that Ingenium does not control. Please read the third-party’s privacy policies before entering personal information or conducting a transaction on their site.

Have questions? Review our Privacy Statement

Vous quittez IngeniumCanada.org

✖


Ce lien mène à un site Web externe qu'Ingenium ne contrôle pas. Veuillez lire les politiques de confidentialité des tiers avant de partager des renseignements personnels ou d'effectuer une transaction sur leur site.

Questions? Consultez notre Énoncé de confidentialité

Ingenium The Channel

Langue

  • Français
Search Toggle

Menu des liens rapides

  • Ingenium Locations
  • Shop
  • Donate
  • Join
Menu

Main Navigation

  • Browse
    • Categories
    • Media Types
    • Boards
    • Featured Stories
  • About
    • About The Channel
    • Content Partners

A Canadian Invented Chiropractic Care

This article was originally written and submitted as part of a Canada 150 Project, the Innovation Storybook, to crowdsource stories of Canadian innovation with partners across Canada. The content has since been migrated to Ingenium’s Channel, a digital hub featuring curated content related to science, technology and innovation.

Share
Mar 28, 2017
Categories
Health & Wellness
Media
Article
User profile image
By: Janis Nostbakken
Daniel David Palmer, the Father of Chiropractic
Daniel David Palmer, the Father of Chiropractic

Look up the word “chiropractic” in a dictionary and you might think it was a form of medicine practiced in ancient Greece. Not so, at least not by that name. The word does come from the Greek (cheir “hand” + praktikos “practical”), but it was a Canadian who invented it. Daniel David (D.D.) Palmer was born in Port Perry, Canada West (now Ontario) in 1845. By the time he was 20, D.D. had emigrated to the U.S. where he first encountered a “magnetic healer,” one who claimed to cure illness by manipulating the aura around a sick person. D.D. eventually became a practitioner himself and began to develop his own theory about the origin and treatment of disease. What he concluded was that illness is caused by problems within the nervous system that may be cured through adjustment of the spine, neck and other skeletal parts of the body. On September 18, 1895 in his office in Davenport, Iowa, D.D. first put his theory into action. His building janitor had been hard of hearing for some 17 years. Palmer determined that the cause was related to a vertebra that was out of place. I reasoned that if that vertebra was replaced, the man’s hearing should be restored… I racked it into position… and soon the man could hear as before.

Within two years, the Palmer School and Cure had opened, and training of chiropractic practitioners began. But controversy soon followed. D.D. was charged for practising medicine without a licence, spent 23 days in jail and had to pay a $350 fine. This was the beginning of an ongoing struggle for acceptance of chiropractic as a viable system of healing that to some extent continues today. Although chiropractic has grown to be the third largest primary health care profession in North America, chiropractors had to wait 66 years before being given the legal right in Canada to call themselves doctors.

Tags
Innovation Storybook
Author(s)
User profile image
Janis Nostbakken

Related Stories

A promoter of Sure Food, the food chemist James Pearson (right), at the facility of Wentworth Canning Company Limited of Hamilton, Ontario. Anon., “La viande, synthétique, produit canadien, pourrait sauver de la famine les peuples affamés d’Europe.” Photo-Journal, 5 February 1948, 3.

“It smells like meat. It even looks like meat.” The long forgotten tale of a synthetic meat / meat substitute / meat analogue / meat alternative / imitation meat sometimes called Sure Food

Three images side by side, Canada’s White Glacier, dried mealworms shown on a round wooden platter, and a pair of hands rubbing together, covered in soap bubbles.

3 things you should know about insects as an important source of protein, the science superpowers of soap, and monitoring glaciers in Canada’s Arctic

A small, open box containing several small metal puncturing tools, used to administer smallpox vaccine by scratching the skin and rubbing the vaccine into the scratch.

The History of Vaccines – Smallpox to COVID-19

Three images side by side, grocery shelves full of eggs in clear trays, coral reefs seen from space, and a map of Canada divided into four differently coloured shapes.

3 things you should know about egg refrigeration, coral reef satellite maps, and watersheds

A spliced, three-part image depicts a bowl of food scraps being poured into a wooden bin already containing semi-decomposed food scraps, a huge orange rocket core standing between two white rocket boosters on a mobile launch vehicle, illuminated by spotlights against a black background, and a seated, tired-looking woman sitting in a dark space, slouched over, resting her face on her hand.

3 things you should know about home composting, the Moon-bound Space Launch System rocket, and the science behind dark circles under your eyes

Stethoscopes displayed in the permanent Medical Sensations exhibition at the Canada Science and Technology Museum.

Curating sound culture: Exploring the history of the stethoscope

Autumn vista of a river winding between pine trees and snow-capped mountains.

AI-Generated sound therapy for critically ill patients

A spliced, three-part image depicts sugar beets and a pile of white sugar and sugar cubes, a view of a partially cloud-covered ocean taken from above the Earth, and a humanoid toy robot wearing a stethoscope.

3 things you should know about beets, satellites, and robotic surgery

A pancreas made of light floats between the hands of a woman wearing a white lab coat, a mask, and a stethoscope.

Innovation and the future of diabetes: A conversation with an entrepreneur and diabetes dad

The Mobile Demonstration Irradiator put together by Atomic Energy of Canada Limited. Anon., “Boon to Canadian potato industry.” Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, 21 October 1961, 6.

One hot potato, two hot potatoes, three hot potatoes, four: Atomic Energy of Canada Limited of Chalk River, Ontario, and the early days of food irradiation in Canada

A graphical image depicts a secure data-sharing platform through a series of icons, including a lock, key, and documents.

A shared brain: Data-sharing platform shows researchers the big picture

Close-up of a hand holding brown soil, a cosmic illustration of spaceships flying across colourful planets, a hiking trail that runs through a deciduous forest.

3 things you should know about soil biology, space tourism, and the healing power of nature

Footer

About The Channel

The Channel

Contact Us

Ingenium
P.O. Box 9724, Station T
Ottawa ON K1G 5A3
Canada

613-991-3044
1-866-442-4416
contact@IngeniumCanada.org
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • Channel

    • Channel Home
    • About the Channel
    • Content Partners
  • Visit

    • Online Resources for Science at Home
    • Canada Agriculture and Food Museum
    • Canada Aviation and Space Museum
    • Canada Science and Technology Museum
    • Ingenium Centre
  • Ingenium

    • Ingenium Home
    • About Ingenium
    • The Foundation
  • For Media

    • Newsroom
    • Awards

Connect with us

Subscribe to our newsletter to receive the latest Ingenium news straight to your inbox!

Sign Up

Legal Bits

Ingenium Privacy Statement

© 2023 Ingenium

Symbol of the Government of Canada
  • Browse
    • Categories
    • Media Types
    • Boards
    • Featured Stories
  • About
    • About The Channel
    • Content Partners