EDITOR’S NOTE: Dr. Atwood, who would normally be scheduled to post today, is on vacation. Consequently, we are publishing the following guest post by Samuel Homola, D.C., a retired chiropractor who limited his practice to science-based methods and spoke out against the irrational and abusive practices of his colleagues. He is the author of Inside Chiropractic and Bonesetting, Chiropractic, and Cultism and co-author with Stephen Barrett of the skeptical Chirobase website, a division of Quackwatch) .
In 1895, Daniel David Palmer, a magnetic healer, announced that “95 percent of diseases are caused by displaced vertebrae; the remainder by luxations of other joints.” He opened the first chiropractic school in Davenport, Iowa—the Palmer Infirmary, which offered a three-week course of instruction.
In 1906, D.D. Palmer’s son, Bartlett Joshua Palmer, a 1902 graduate of the Palmer Infirmary, took over his father’s school. In 1924, claiming that “subluxation” of any vertebra would cause disease by compressing nerves in the intervertebral foramina, B.J. Palmer introduced the “Neurocalometer,” a thermocouple device guaranteed to locate nerve-pinching vertebral subluxations. Chiropractors were told that if they did not use this “infallible” device to measure heat differentials on the skin over the spine, they could not competently locate and adjust a subluxation. But the Neurocalometer was not for sale. Chiropractors were forced to lease the instrument and then pay a monthly rent.
In the early 1930s, after nearly three decades of teaching that subluxations anywhere in the spine can cause disease, B.J. Palmer announced that he had found the one and only cause of disease: subluxation of the atlas. Palmer concluded that subluxation of a spinal vertebra below the axis was not possible because vertebrae below that level were bound together by intervertebral discs and interlocking joints. Students at the Palmer School of Chiropractic were not permitted to adjust the spine below the axis until 1949 when full-spine techniques were once again included in the course of instruction.
B.J. Palmer’s “hole-in-one” (HIO) technique for adjusting the atlas and the axis remained popular among certain factions of the chiropractic profession. According to the 2005 edition of Job Analysis of Chiropractic, published by the National Board of Chiropractic Examines, 25.7% of practicing chiropractors include the “Palmer upper cervical/HIO” technique in their adjustive procedures. (more…)