Meet Dr. D.D. Palmer
D.D. PALMER, FPAC – THE DISCOVERER AND FOUNDER
(March 7, 1845-Oct. 20, 1913)
Schoolteacher, apiarist, magnetic healer and chiropractor, Daniel David (D.D.) Palmer was born in Audley,
Ontario, in 1845 and emigrated to the United States.
At the end of the 19th century when D.D. Palmer came on the health-care scene, medicine was in a state
of disarray. Many alternative healing practices were founded in this era. D.D. reasoned the body had an
ample supply of natural healing power transmitted through the nervous system. If a single organ was sick,
it must not be receiving its normal nerve supply. That led to the premise of spinal misalignment, or
subluxation, and from there to a procedure for adjusting the vertebrae.
Known as The Discoverer of Chiropractic and as The Founder of the chiropractic profession, D.D.
Palmer performed the first chiropractic adjustment on Sept. 18, 1895, in Davenport, Iowa.
He founded Palmer School and Cure (now Palmer College of Chiropractic) in Davenport in 1897. He
founded additional chiropractic schools in Santa Barbara, California; Portland, Oregon; and Oklahoma
City, Oklahoma. He died in 1913. He was posthumously named a distinguished Fellow in the Palmer
Academy of Chiropractic in 2006.