Full Potential Living - The Official Blog of Amoskeag Chiropractic & Amherst Family Chiropractic

How Did Chiropractic Get Started?

Posted: April 30, 2019
By: Melissa Nichol

                                                                       

                                                                             D.D. Palmer                                              Harvey Lillard

 

September 18th, 1895 a gentleman named Daniel David Palmer, D.D. for short, was working in his office as the janitor came in to do his cleaning.  This Janitor’s name is Harvey Lillard.  Now Harvey had partially lost his hearing about 17 years prior when heard a “pop” in his upper back while working.  D.D. convinced a reluctant Harvey to let him examine his spine.  Upon D.D.’s examination of Harvey’s spine he noticed that a vertebra had been dislodged from its natural position.  D.D. reasoned that if the vertebra was restored to its natural position then Harvey’s hearing would be restored.  That’s exactly what D.D. did.  He performed a specific spinal adjustment restoring Harvey’s misaligned vertebra to it’s natural position.  Shortly thereafter Harvey began to notice that he could hear the racket of the wagons outside and the ticking of the clock!  His hearing had been restored!

Why did this work?

In simplest terms, a subluxation (a.k.a. Vertebral Subluxation) is when one or more of the bones of your spine (vertebrae) move out of position and create pressure on, or irritate spinal nerves. Spinal nerves are the nerves that come out from between each of the bones in your spine. This pressure or irritation on the nerves then causes those nerves to malfunction and interfere with the signals traveling over those nerves.

How does this affect you? Your nervous system controls and coordinates all the functions of your body. If you interfere with the signals traveling over nerves, parts of your body will not get the proper nerve messages and will not be able to function at 100% of their innate abilities. In other words, some part of your body will not be working properly. It is the responsibility of the Doctor of Chiropractic to locate subluxations, and reduce or correct them. This is done through a series of chiropractic adjustments specifically designed to correct the vertebral subluxations in your spine. Chiropractors are the only professionals who undergo years of training to be the experts at correcting subluxations.