Since it started in 1895, chiropractic has grown to become the largest natural healthcare profession in the world. Chiropractors restore health and quality of life by optimising the body's innate self-healing abilities.
Chiropractors train for a minimum of five years, working with their hands to locate and correct imbalances in the spine known as "vertebral subluxations". Vertebral subluxations directly impact the nervous system and adversely affect the function and health of the body. By correcting or "adjusting" vertebral subluxations, chiropractors help people of all ages to be at their best.
Chiropractic History
While working in a stooped position, Harvey Lillard felt something "pop" in his neck. A few days later his hearing was gone.
Seventeen
years passed in silence. Then, on September 18, 1895, Harvey Lillard
related his story to Daniel David Palmer, a magnetic healer who
practiced in Davenport, Iowa, where Lillard was a janitor.
Palmer
examined the janitor's spine and discovered a bump in the area where
Lillard said he had felt the pop. Reasoning that this bump was the
result of one of the spinal column's 26 vertebrae being out of line,
Palmer persuaded Lillard to let him try to restore it to its normal
position.
He applied a force to the bump. There was another pop,
and the bump was gone. In a few days, Lillard's hearing was restored.
In the process, chiropractic was born.
Chiropractic is a
relatively new health care profession - just over 100 years old.
Although the profession is young, many of its vitalistic principles
date back thousands of years. Ancient Egyptians and Greeks, while
possessing little knowledge of the internal structure of the human
body, were aware of the body's continual striving to heal itself.
During the Renaissance, men of learning put forth theories which spoke
of "vital forces" within the body that organized its resistance to
disease. The "vital force" they spoke of is what chiropractors refer to
as the body's innate intelligence.
It was Daniel David Palmer
who, in 1895, discovered the relationship among the vital forces, the
nerve system, the vertebrae and the expression of health. He reasoned
that an innate intelligence continuously strives to maintain the body's
organization. He also realized that this innate intelligence utilizes
the nerve system to assemble and transmit the information necessary to
ensure the proper function of the various parts of the human body.
Palmer
further reasoned that a vertebra that was even slightly misaligned
could cause pressure on the spinal cord or small spinal nerves. This
misalignment and interference, called a vertebral subluxation, modifies
the impulses carried by the nerves and this, in turn, modifies bodily
function. In such a state, the body is less able to function, maintain
its own health, and ultimately to express life.
After adjusting
a subluxated vertebra for the first time, Palmer witnessed the
restoration of spinal integrity, a dramatic change in his patient's
health and the birth of a profession.
Chiropractic grew rapidly
under the guidance of Palmer's son, B.J., who transformed the
profession into an advanced science and a well-developed art. His goal
was to be able to objectively locate and analyze vertebral subluxation
and to verify the changes that occurred both when vertebrae became
subluxated and when the vertebral subluxation was corrected.
Today,
chiropractic has evolved into a highly developed science and art which
deals with vertebral subluxation and its effect on the body's natural
striving toward health. Chiropractic, as a primary health care
profession, recognizes and respects the body's innate striving to
maintain its own health and has developed more than 300 sophisticated
techniques for correcting vertebral subluxation, a major interference
to that striving. Chiropractic views health as optimum life expression
on every level.
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