The Popular Alternative Medical Practice Invented by a Ghost

Listen, we aren’t here to yuck anyone’s yums. If you feel better after some dude elbow drops you in the spine in an office above the sketchy but really good Chinese buffet, more power to ya. It’s pseudoscientific bullshit, but so is feng shui, and sometimes, you just want someone to tell you where to put your couch. Bottom line, telling other people what to do with their bodies is uncool and usually illegal.

You should be aware, however, of the circumstances under which Big Daddy Chiropractor invented his practice. Daniel David Palmer of Davenport, Iowa was a true Renaissance man, in the sense that he held 16th-century beliefs in the 1800s (also in that he held several jobs, including healer, teacher, entrepreneur and beekeeper). His formal education ended at age 11, and while we usually like our medical practitioners to have a little more schooling than that, being anti-more schooling than that was kind of Palmer’s whole thing. His primary practice was “magnetic healing,” or guiding his hands over people’s organs and concentrating his magnetism in a way that definitely didn’t heal them. He also didn’t believe in vaccination, calling the smallpox vaccine “filthy animal poison.” Basically, he’d fit right in on Instagram.

It wasn’t until 1895 that Palmer assembled his system of chiropractic principles, which he claimed to have received “from the other world.” Specifically, a Dr. Jim Atkins, an “intelligent spirit being” who Palmer claimed had lived in Davenport 50 years earlier. Dr. Atkins was actually the first chiropractor, Palmer said, but “the intellectuality of that time was not ready for this advancement.” Do we have any evidence at all of Dr. Atkins’s existence? We sure don’t. But when Palmer convinced his office building’s deaf janitor to let him try out the technique he’d dreamed up or whatever, both claimed his hearing was cured, and a new branch of alternative medicine/cult was born.

It’s worth noting that Palmer was married six times and had “at least” four children, one of whom may or may not have tried to run him over in a car, so whatever virtues Dr. Atkins possessed, Palmer wasn’t exactly the most reliable or conscientious messenger. It’s also worth noting that the dangers of chiropractic adjustments, particularly in the neck, include having a stroke and dying. 

Your body, your choice and all, but maybe think twice before taking medical advice from a medium, no matter how good his honey is.