The First Chiropractic Adjustment: September 18, 1895

Chiropractic Then:  

The first chiropractic adjustment was given by Daniel David "D.D." Palmer on September 18th, 1895, in Davenport, Iowa.

Mr. Harvey Lillard, a janitor, had told Palmer that he had suffered from back pain and that he had lost most of his hearing. Lillard added that he could no longer hear sounds like the clip-clopping of the horses just outside the window, or the ticking of his watch. Palmer asked Lillard how he had lost his hearing. Lillard replied, that seventeen years prior, while bent over, in a stooped position, he hear something "pop" in his spine and immediately suffered a loss of most of his hearing.

Palmer examined Lillard, and found a tender lump on the spine between his shoulders. He recognized the lump as a badly misaligned vertebra, and reasoned that since it had occurred when the man went deaf, restoring the vertebra to its proper position might also restore Lillard's hearing.

Palmer reasoned that the body was controlled through the brain and nerve system by thousands of messages sent every second to control each structure and function within the body, and that pressure on the nerves could distort and block these messages as they traveled from the brain, to the spinal cord and on to the body. Palmer felt that Lillard's hearing loss was due to a blockage of the spinal nerves, which control the inner ear. Ultimately, this nerve blockage and bone misalignment "vertebral subluxations" lessoned the body's ability to function by disrupting communication over the nerve system. When Palmer corrected the misalignment by pushing the vertebrae back into place, the nerve pathways were reopened and thus Lillard's hearing was restored.

Chiropractic was born! Palmer began checking other patients for evidence of misaligned vertebrae and adjusting them. He quickly discovered that many of their ailments were alleviated altogether, after his efforts to reposition the bones. From these observations, and from his own study and knowledge of health, Palmer concluded that good health is the normal natural state of the body.

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And Now:

Tonal or nervous system centered chiropractic techniques are not muscle or bone based but rather focus on the nervous system and the related changes in a person's physiology. As such, tonal chiropractic techniques look at the nervous system first and the doctor's input into the nervous system then affects the muscle system, which in turn, affects the skeletal system.

Why do we prefer a tonal approach? The answer comes in understanding how the interference to a person's nervous system takes place to begin with. Did the bone move out of place thus affecting the nerve, which then affects the muscle? Bones cannot move by themselves so there must have been a muscle imbalance first. Did the muscle imbalance occur first thereby causing the bone to move out of its normal position?

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Muscles do not think or act on their own so a muscle imbalance can only be the result of an unbalanced nerve supply to the muscles. So, the bone can only move if a muscle moves it and a muscle will only move when the nervous system tells it to. For us then, it makes more sense to address the nervous system first so all else can follow.

PFC Polson Family Chiropractic 

801 4th Ave. E., Polson  l  883-4216  l   l  polsonchiropractor.com

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