Background
Daniel David Palmer was born on March 7, 1845 in Port Perry, Ontario, Canada.
Daniel David Palmer was born on March 7, 1845 in Port Perry, Ontario, Canada.
Daniel David Palmer had little benefit from schooling and was practically self-educated.
In 1865 Daniel Palmer was a schoolteacher in New Boston, Illinois, until 1871. From 1871 to 1881 he operated a fruit and berry nursery and an apiary in Mercer County, Illinois. From 1881 to 1884 Daniel Palmer operated a grocery store in What Cheer, Iowa. During the 1884-1885 school year, he taught school in Letts. At that time, David Palmer was instructed in magnetic healing by Paul Caster in Ottumwa. He had made some study of osteopathy and of spinal adjustments, interest in which he attributed to the influence of Dr. James Atkinson of Davenport.
In September 1886 Daniel Palmer opened his first magnetic healing office in Burlington. In 1887 he moved to Davenport and opened a magnetic healing office there. After his arrival in Davenport, Daniel Palmer became a vocal opponent of vaccinations, drugs, and vivisection. In September 1895 he made the first trial of spinal adjustment upon the colored janitor of the building in which he had his office, for deafness. As originally stated by Daniel Palmer his science "consisted in removing the impingement of nerves in any of the three hundred or more articulations of the human skeleton, particularly the fifty-two articulations of the vertebral column, by using processes of the vertebrae as levers to rack the vertebra into position". Later in practice and in teaching, the offending nerve impingements were confined to the intervertebral foramina and the resultant effects charged to impairment of function in the corresponding segments of the spinal cord. The name chiropractic was suggested for the new science by the Reverend Samuel H. Weed of Bloomington, Illinois, an early patient. The name (Greek cheir, hand, and praktikos, efficient) was freely translated by Palmer as "done by hand."
In 1898 Daniel Palmer started the Palmer School of Chiropractic, with a three months' course. He had but fifteen students during its first five years, his son, Bartlett Joshua, being among the graduates of 1902. Leaving the school in his son's care David Palmer went in 1903 to Portland, Oregon, where he opened the Portland College of Chiropractic. The venture was not successful and he soon returned to Davenport. In 1906 Daniel Palmer was arrested for practicing medicine without a license and served a sentence of six months in jail. When released he severed his connection with the school which was left to the direction of his son. Daniel Palmer went to Oklahoma City and participated in the establishment of the short-lived Palmer-Gregory Chiropractic College. From here Daniel Palmer returned to Portland and became affiliated with the recently organized Pacific College of Chiropractic. Finding conditions at this school uncongenial he retired to private practice and to writing his Textbook of the Science, Art, and Philosophy of Chiropractic, which appeared in 1910. This voluminous tome is an unrelated mixture of maxims, poetry, satire, invective, and irrelevances. With "allopathy" as his main target, he spares nobody, least of all his colleagues in chiropractic.
In 1906 Daniel Palmer had published in collaboration with his son, Bartlett Joshua, The Science of Chiropractic, and in 1914 there was published a posthumous volume, The Chiropractor, at Los Angeles, his later home. In the meantime, the Davenport school had prospered under the younger Palmer. In August of 1913, there was held a widely heralded homecoming of former students. An estrangement of some years' standing existed between father and son, but to this school, the celebration came its founder, an uninvited guest. While acting as the self-appointed leader of a street parade of students and graduates Daniel Palmer was struck by a passing automobile and taken unconscious to a hospital. He recovered sufficiently to be moved to Los Angeles where he died about two months after the accident.
Quotations:
"Disease is a disturbed condition, not a thing or entity."
"There is a vast difference between treating effects and adjusting the cause."
Physical Characteristics:
Daniel Palmer was short and heavyset, with a broad round face and long flowing hair and beard.
Daniel Palmer married at least five times and had at least four children, although the records are incomplete. His son, Bartlett Joshua, was born in 1881 in What Cheer, Iowa.