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

Holly Folk’s history of the origins and development of chiropractic blends the story of D. D. Palmer (the “discoverer”) and his son B. J. Palmer (the “developer”) of spinal manipulation therapy with indepth analyses of New Thought, Western Esotericism, Harmonial Religion, and more. Folk deftly places chiropratic within the context of nineteenth-century alternative medicine, which includes magnetic healing, vertebral vitalism, neurocentrism, and other metaphysical approaches to health. Six chapters focus on chiropractic’s beginnings and the (literal) internecine conflicts that ensue over philosophy and treatment. The seventh looks at the current state of chiropractic outside the United States and, somewhat oddly, reintroduces the possibility of Rosicrucian influences on the Palmers, briefly covered in earlier chapters. The book is a veritable compendium of the most influential alternative mental and physical healers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the United States.

Most fascinating are the glimpses that Folk provides of the precursors of contemporary new religions. A Palmer graduate who taught at the Portland school, Joy Maxwell Loban published a list of the ultimate truths of revealed by chiropratic—matter, energy, time, and space. These should sound familiar, since L. Ron Hubbard seems to repurpose them as Scientology’s theory of MEST. Also familiar is the Neurocalometer (208) which looks suspiciously like a primitive e-meter. B. J. Palmer’s decision to “convert Chiropractic to a religion” (185) to escape running afoul of the American Medical Association and other gatekeepers was apparently a pragmatic business decision rather than a principled philosophical stance. This, too, is a recognizable approach. I don’t think we should necessarily draw genetic connections here, nor does Folk, but these and other intriguing forerunners in The Religion of Chiropractic provide much needed background for understanding the New Age movement, vaccine skeptics, and chiropractic today. It will interest scholars of new religious movements, alternative medicine, and American entrepreneurship, among others. Portrait photographs and images of posters, graphs, and publicity enrich the text.