The idea of chiropractic medicine is neither new nor revolutionary. In fact, the tried and true methods used in chiropractic care were partially discovered and invented by Daniel Palmer, a Canadian native, in the late 1800s.

Born in the year 1845, it took Palmer a little while to find his place in life. Working as a teacher for children and also as an accountant and grocer, he eventually followed the path his voracious reading appetite led him down: a career in alternative healing.

Palmer was not a medical doctor and did not pretend to have the kind of education the physicians of the time had enjoyed, yet when he read medical texts, he could not help but wonder if there was not something that was being overlooked.

A devotee of spiritualism and its ideas of alternative healing, it did not take long for Palmer to engage in the art of magnetic healing, which in the 1880s was quite the rage in America.

A chance meeting with a man who suffered from deafness and a rather sizable lump in his back is what led to Palmer's breakthrough in chiropractics.

Palmer could not help but wonder if there might be a connection between the lump in the man’s back and the deafness from which he suffered.

Putting his theory to the test, he sought to manipulate the nerves of the back and free the nerves from the pressure put on them by the lump through aggressive palpitations.

A breakthrough for alternative medicine occurred when Palmer stunned the American medical society with reports of successful treatment!

From then on, Palmer’s course was set. He continued to work on his ideas and later founded a school in Iowa dedicated to the training of future chiropractors who would be schooled in his research, methods, and be able to hopefully duplicate his successful treatments.

Of course, this did not sit well with the established medical professionals of the day, who looked with suspicion on this latest development. It did not take long for the threatened physicians to accuse Palmer—and have him convicted—of practicing medicine without a license.

Not one to be easily intimidated, he spent a few days in jail, paid his fine, and left his school behind—only to travel to the Western Coast states to open three new schools in Oregon, Oklahoma, and California.

While Palmer was not able to witness the growing popularity of his newfound movement due to his death in 1913, it goes without saying that chiropractic care has become a mainstream commodity.

Interestingly, the feud between established medicine and chiropractic continues to linger and every so often even flares up, just like it did in the days when Palmer first introduced his theory to the world.