CHIROPRACTIC

Many people experience chiropractic as a natural drug-free way to get healthy. For example, a little boy who no longer suffers from ear infections may tell you: “Chiropractic is for my ears.” A young woman may tell you: “Chiropractic is for menstrual problems.” Others may tell you that chiropractic is for digestive problems, asthma, back or neck pain, colds, headache, sciatica, neurological problems, colic, bed-wetting and many more conditions to which the flesh is heir.

But it won’t be only talk of disease. People also visit their chiropractor for more energy, for improved sports performance, for feeling more alive, for better resistance to disease and to help ensure drug-free lives for themselves and their families.

What do chiropractors do? Chiropractors remove a serious interference in your life and health – vertebral subluxations – which prevent you from functioning at your best. Free of vertebral subluxations, you are more balanced with less stress on your nervous system and body structure. Free of vertebral subluxations, you can better tune in to your inner resources of life, health and healing.

History

Though the chiropractic profession celebrated only its 100th anniversary in 1995, various forms of spinal manipulation have actually been practiced for thousands of years. The earliest mention of manipulation as a healing procedure is in the ancient Chinese manuscript, Kong-Fou, said to have been written about 2700 B.C. The Chinese, Japanese, and Tibetans in the Far East, the ancient Greeks, Egyptians, Babylonians, Syrians, and Hindus of the Middle East, as well as the Aztecs and Incas of Central and South America, all practiced spinal adjustment.

On September 18, 1885, Daniel David Palmer, in a now famous incident, gave birth to modern chiropractic. Harvey Lillard, a maintenance man, related to Palmer that he had lost his hearing 17 years earlier when he had heard something “pop” while working in a twisted position under a stairwell. Palmer examined him and located a vertebra that was apparently displaced. Using the spinous process of the vertebra as a lever, he repositioned the bone into its proper place. Lillard’s hearing improved immediately, and within a week had almost fully returned.

Palmer went on to develop his new discovery which he named chiropractic – a combination of Greek words cheir and prakikis, meaning “done by hand”. “I am not the first person to replace subluxated vertebrae, for this act has been practiced for thousands of years,” said Palmer. “I do claim, however, to be the first to replace displaced vertebrae by using the spinous and transverse process wherewith to rack subluxated vertebrae into normal position, and from this basic fact, to create a science which is destined to revolutionize the theory and practice of the healing art.”