Mark your calendars! Because on September 18th, chiropractic turns 117. It was on this day back in 1895, from his office on the second floor of the Ryan Block building in Davenport, Iowa, that D.D. Palmer delivered his first adjustment — an adjustment that not only changed the life of his patient, but the lives of millions that would follow the birth of this new profession of chiropractic.
So, just what did the first chiropractic patient complain of? Well, it may surprise you, but it wasn’t back pain, neck pain, or even headaches.
No it was — get ready for this — deafness! His patient, Mr. Harvey Lillard, explained that for the past 17 years he had been unable to hear out of his left ear after an incident in which he exerted himself while working in a “cramped, stooping position,” when something gave way in his back — immediately bringing on the deafness. Palmer wrote that Mr. Lillard was so deaf that he couldn’t hear the ticking of a watch or the racket of a wagon on the street. Upon examining the gentleman’s spine, Dr. Palmer found what appeared to be a misaligned vertebra in the mid back region. Hypothesizing that this misalignment could be the cause of the hearing problem, he persuaded his patient to allow him to realign it. And align it he did! Almost immediately following the adjustment, Mr. Lillard could hear again!
Chiropractic, a cure for deafness? Palmer probably thought so at first. But the fact is, chiropractic is not a cure for anything — not even back pain. Chiropractic, as D.D. Palmer would soon find out, was a way of simply allowing the body to work better by removing nervous system interference due to structural misalignment or dysfunction of the spine. Mr. Lillard’s deafness happened to have a structural component to it. Not every condition has a structural component, and certainly not every time. As far as deafness goes, a structural malposition of a vertebra is not by any means commonplace. Thankfully it happened to be on that September day in 1895. For it was this incident that encouraged Palmer to study further and later learn that by optimizing one’s spinal function and position, greater health would come about and maladies tended to disappear.
