Did You Know?

The Birth of a new Healing Art

The genesis of the wellness revolution, the story of chiropractic.  It was September of 1895 when a magnetic healer named Dr. D.D. Palmer examined a deaf janitor in Davenport, Iowa. Harvey Lillard, a deaf janitor who worked in the building in which D.D. Palmer practiced, described to Dr. Palmer that he lost his hearing 17 years previously while exerting himself.  Mr. Lillard explained that he felt something give way in his back and immediately became deaf. Dr. Palmer examined Mr. Lillard and located a subluxated vertebra in his spine. Dr. Palmer then purposefully repositioned the vertebrae back into place and Mr. Lillard’s hearing was miraculously restored.

Shortly after the Harvey Lillard case, Dr. Palmer had a patient with heart trouble that also was resolved when he replaced (adjusted) a subluxated vertebrae. In this particular case, he examined the spine and located a subluxated vertebrae pressing on the nerves supplying messages to the heart. Dr. Palmer reasoned that if two diseases, so different as deafness and heart trouble, came from pressure on the nerves, then other diseases may be caused due to a similar cause.

Thus, the science and art of Chiropractic were formed. The dawn of a new era of health care was born, a system to investigate the cause of all disease and treat the cause, not the sign or symptom. A system based on a vitalistic approach that allowed our bodies to heal naturally without the use of toxic drugs or surgeries.

The Broken Wrist Analogy

If you fell and broke your wrist, you would go to the local emergency clinic where the orthopedist would x-ray your wrist, set the bone, cast your wrist and send you home. If it felt better the next day and you went to the clinic to ask if they would remove your cast, what do you think they’d say? They would laugh at you. Why? How long does it take the bone to heal? In a healthy teenager with a simple wrist fracture would take 4-6 weeks for the bones to heal and the cast would have to remain on for the duration. At the end of six weeks they remove the cast. Would your wrist be 100%? Would you be able to do everything that you were able to do before the fracture? No, it will take at least another 4-6 weeks to strengthen and stabilize the wrist joint. Now suppose you are a 53 year old woman who slips on the stairs and suffers a complicated fracture of the wrist. Now we are talking about 3-4 months to heal the fracture and another 3-4 months of rehabilitation.

So when we recommend your initial care in our office we consider your age and the extent of damage to your nervous system. Our recommendations include the time to heal and time for strengthening and stabilizing the spine to prepare you for wellness care. Why? We don’t heal overnight. Healing is a process, not an event. Chiropractic is a Lifestyle, not a Treatment. What changes are you willing to make in your lifestyle for better health next year?