The Religion of Chiropractic: Populist Healing from the American Heartland by Holly Folk (review)

Holly Folk, a self-described "religionist," aims in The Religion of Chiropractic "to relate the chiropractic narrative and put it into historical context" (p. 1). In many ways she achieves these goals; indeed, her study supersedes J. Stuart Moore's Chiropractic in America (1993) as the best scholarly overview of chiropractic.¹ Drawing on the archival collections at the Palmer College of Chiropractic, including D. D. Palmer's journal, as well as on local newspapers and obscure chiropractic publications and "advertorials," she tells a lively and insightful story focusing on three generations of Palmers: Daniel David (D. D.) Palmer, the "Founder," who allegedly discovered chiropractic in 1895; his son, Joshua Bartlett (B. J.) Palmer, the "Developer," who took over from his father; and, in less detail, D. D.'s grandson, David Daniel (Dave) Palmer.

The Canadian-born D. D., possessing no prior medical training, began his healing career in the 1880s as a "magnetic manipulator." Married five times, D. D. made his home in Davenport, Iowa, where he launched his chiropractic practice with the accidental, and perhaps mythical, healing of a janitor named Harvey Lillard. Later he claimed to have learned chiropractic in a séance with a deceased physician named Dr. Jim Atkinson. D. D., whom Folk repeatedly describes as "sincere"—if not always truthful—at first toyed with the notion of promoting his discovery as a religion, like Christian Science, but eventually modeled chiropractic on the medical sect of osteopathy. After some trial and error he came to focus on spinal misalignments or "subluxations" as the cause of virtually all disease, which resulted from the spinal blockage of the all-important Innate Intelligence. He repeatedly quarreled with his entrepreneurial son B. J., to whom in 1906 he sold the Palmer and left Iowa, dying in California six years later.

The flamboyant B. J., a serial plagiarist who, according to Folk, "lied with complete sincerity" (p. 210), shared his father's traits of selfishness and dishonesty, as well as D. D.'s interest in spiritualism. He introduced the use of X-rays in diagnosing spinal problems, which soon became a staple of chiropractic practice, and beginning in 1923 he actively promoted the Neurocalometer, invented a former Palmer student, who claimed that it could spot subluxations scientifically by measuring variations in spinal heat. At times B. J. seemed obsessed with making money to support his ostentatious lifestyle. During the 1920s he branched out into the media world, starting a successful radio station and publishing profitable travel books. Late in life B. J. suffered from a host of disabling infirmities, some of which drove him into the care of the enemy: regular physicians and surgeons. He died from colon cancer.

Folk devotes comparatively little attention to B. J.'s only son, Dave Palmer. Against his father's wishes, Dave enrolled in the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania to study business. After four years he returned degreeless to run the family's businesses in Davenport. Folk credits him with moving the "Palmer College of Chiropractic away from its proprietary model toward being a nonprofit educational institution" (p. 227). In addition to featuring these three personalities, Folk also relates the general development of chiropractic and opposition to it. In her concluding chapter, "The World of Chiropractic," she briefly discusses the "internationalization" of chiropractic, but she largely abandons history for speculation and advice. Chiropractic, she observes, is "better positioned than any other alternative healing system to emerge over the past 200 years" (p. 253), a prophecy with which friends and practitioners of osteopathy might disagree. In answer to the question "Shall chiropractic survive?" she boldly asserts that it "will thrive" (p. 278).

From time to time Folk sprinkles in references to such academic celebrities as the philosopher of religion Ernst Troeltsch, the sociologist Max Weber, and the anthropologist Clifford Geertz. She views her book as a contribution to "subaltern positioning...