By Dr. Walter R. Rhodes
Published by Texas Chiropractic Association, 303 International Life Building, Austin, TX 78701.As authorized by the various Boards of Directors of the Texas Chiropractic Association from 1958 to 1977, the idea first being presented to the board by E. L. Bauknight in 1958.
These excerpts are presented for educational purposes.
Chiropractic officially dates its birth from September 18, 1895, when D. D. Palmer successfully adjusted the spine of Harvey Lilliard, a janitor in the building where he had his offices, and Lillard’s hearing abruptly returned. Palmer, born March 7, 1845, was 50 years old at the time.
But it is unfair, really, to date it from there unless one has a fairly broad understanding of events going on before. A surprising amount of background is now available to help explain events that played substantial roles in the history of the first 10 years, ….
At the great gatherings of chiropractors even today the parts played and the lasting influence of the three greatest men are discussed …. The trio we must consider are D. D. Palmer, Willard Carver, and B. J. Palmer and the story really begins when we realize that the families of D. D. Palmer and Willard Carver were neighbors since before 1882 ….
The Carvers were basically farmers, the Palmers were grocery men and the families were more or less friends for many years. Willard Carver writes that he first saw B. J. when the child was two months old, being carried in his mother’s arms while the older men took care of business.
Mrs. D. D. Palmer, the first of four wives, died shortly afterward and D. D. soon married a woman who, according to Carver and the accounts of many others, did not display the affection and kindliness needed by either her husband or her stepson, B. J. Her personality conflicted so greatly with D.D. that he is said to have left for long periods of time in a search for peace because when he was present the family was in constant turmoil. It soon became clear that B. J. was to be reared by an absentee father and a stepmother who regarded him lightly.
During this period of history D. D. Palmer studied magnetic healing under the supervision of Dr. Paul Caster of Ottumwa, Iowa, who attracted patients from all over the world and maintained a large practice for several years …. Upon finishing his studies Palmer began his own practice in magnetic healing in Burlington, Iowa, moving to Davenport in 1888 when he was 43 years old.
Willard Carver was born July 14, 1866, in Scott County, Iowa, and his mother’s parents, Daniel and Emily Nutting lived close by. Howard, the son of Daniel Nutting and his wife, who was Willard Carver’s mother’s brother, was to play a large, but quite silent part in the history of chiropractic in 1902, which story will be related in its proper place.
Carver was of farming stock and was himself a farmer until he graduated from law school at Drake University in Des Moines in June 1891, at the age of 24 – this was a little more than four years before the birth of chiropractic – and he was to continue to practice law for 13 years.
He relates in his unpublished History of Chiropractic that he at first planned to become a doctor of medicine but gave it up after extensive study convinced him it was too inexact to be scientific. Nevertheless anatomy and the ideas of life, health, sickness, and disease had long and seriously fascinated him, and his father before him; and the beginning practice of law did not alter that interest. He and his father had dissected farm animals and tried to determine the causes of their deaths, and had studied the human body and its functions as well as they could from information then available.
From 1898 to 1906 Willard Carver counted D. D. Palmer as one of his law clients but there had apparently been frequent contact between them and periodic discussions regarding things medical for several years before. By 1888 D. D. was in the magnetic healing business and may have used lawyer Willard Carver professionally from as far back as 1891. We have no definite records about conversations regarding matters of health and disease between the two of them very long before 1895 but Dr. Lorna Langmore a former member of the staff at Carver Chiropractic College, insists that they did; and Dr. Fred Carver, Willard’s brother, also speaks of Willard and D. D. being in more or less continual discussion about such things during the gestation period of chiropractic when things were happening in What Cheer, Iowa, which was the home of both Harvey Lillard and D. D. Palmer in the years before D. D. left the grocery business. That year had to be prior to 1887; Carver was then 21, Palmer 42. Carver would have been in Des Moines in law school from 1888 through 1891.
Dr. Fred Carver was no particular admirer of his brother, developing a separate school of thought in Wichita, Kansas, where in monthly newsletters he expounded his own views, regularly taking Willard to task, especially over the issue of using x-rays in chiropractic practice, which Willard condemned heartily. But Fred affirmed Willard’s claims of the early discussions, and spoke of them with personal knowledge rather than as one who had been told a thing by someone else. A handwritten letter still exists which shows the extent of some of the discussions. It originated in 1905 from Carver and was sent to both B. J. and D. D. Palmer. In the letter Carver is arguing against an idea suggested by D. D Palmer in a previous letter sent to Carver regarding the role of suggestive therapeutics in chiropractic – which argument must have been persuasive because D. D. Palmer adopted the entire idea and promoted it in his own book which was published in 1910. The language of the letter also suggested that relationships between them were strained even then, each one regarding himself as “the authority” and informing the other of “truths” in no uncertain terms:
February 15th, 1905
D. D. Palmer
B. J. Palmer
Dear Doctors:
Yours received and read carefully. Permit me to answer, notwithstanding the tone of your letter, which clearly indicates that you had in mind that you were leaving nothing for me to say. ...Now, to my surprise, what you said on the subject of suggestive therapeutics is most profoundly conclusive that you know practically nothing of the science of suggestion. ….A perfect system for the reduction of disease will not discard any agent or means which never does harm, but always good, and has been known to entirely remove disease …You say Chiropractic is purely a mechanical science and consists wholly in the adjustment of luxations ….….Suggestion is not a treatment of disease, but is a correction or adjustment of the very cause in all that part of the organism not mechanical, Chiro is the same thing limited to the mechanical. Suggestion goes back further than the mechanical, to the very foundation of life, and has to do with an intelligence which existed before there was a bony structure to luxate.….It is because I Love Chiro as ardently as a schoolboy his first sweetheart that I beg of you to bring the science of suggestion down to date and make it the working companion in adjustment.At least, bring it down to date before discarding it.
Yours truly,
Willard Carver
Carver and Palmer, therefore, had early discussions between themselves about things which were later to form the basis of chiropractic as it was to be developed. They undoubtedly influenced each other’s thinking in ways that can never be measured.
While D. D. Palmer was practicing magnetic healing Willard Carver was practicing law. Both, however, were thinking about things yet to come.
During 1894-1895 Carver, although having no practice contact with patients, had decided to announce a system of healing to fit the new ideas in his head and made plans to announce it to the world as the system of “Relatolity” on New Year’s Day, 1896, having timed the planned announcement with the onset of the new year in a public relations move. He had decided to pursue a system involving some form of manipulation, massage and psychology but therein lay his problem: there was no predictable, definable, scientific method of applying this therapy he had in mind. It might be very accurately said that in 1895 he knew what he wanted to accomplish but the means were still beyond him.
The means were to ultimately be provided by Harvey Lillard who had, about 17 years perviously, while working in What Cheer, Iowa, lifted a heavy weight from a stooped and cramped position. He had felt something in his back give way and, from that moment, had ceased to hear from his left ear.
Willard had moved to Davenport and was the janitor in Ryan Block, where Palmer had his offices, and he soon sought out Palmer for treatment of his general condition.
Palmer was giving what the magnetic healers called the “long passes” of the spine when an area of the 4th dorsal neuromere behaved in such a way as to attract Palmer’s attention. It was obviously misaligned and discolored and he set about performing all the corrective manipulations he had been taught, but none worked.
Finally, on September 18, 1895, Palmer impatiently struck the vertebral prominence with the edge of his hand: it made a discernible sound, changed its appearance, and the hearing in Lillard’s left ear immediately returned on a permanent basis.
That adjustment got many things started , including arguments. One thing that has never been argued about, however, was that D. D. Palmer was the discoverer of chiropractic.
After the happy incident with Harvey Lillard, Palmer continued to practice magnetic healing – with additions. By late fall of the same year he had developed four methods of adjusting the vertebrae and had begun a series of trial and error stratagems to develop the budding science which he now proceeded to name.
A preacher Palmer new, Samuel H. Weed of Monmouth, Illinois, did what any Greek Scholar would have done: sought for Greek names. They agreed to call the developing science and art “chiropractic” from the two Greek words cheir – hand, and prakitos – done, the combined meaning being “done with the hands.” The name rankled Willard Carver from that time on. He regarded it as something little less than an abomination, and claimed besides that they had adopted the adjective form of the word instead of the correct noun form. But had positions been reversed, Relatolity would probably have been just as objectionable.
About the 24th of September, 1895, while in the midst of contract negotiations with a group of clients, Carver received a letter from D. D. Palmer which described the first adjustment in all its details. Carver read it and carelessly tossed it aside.
Later that same night, realizing its potential, he returned to his office to retrieve it only to discover that it had already been incinerated by the janitor, thereby losing an invaluable announcement forever.
The giving of the first adjustment however was not an achieved goal; it was only an historic event. If it was ever to amount to anything it must be developed in its two forms: art and science. Providence, in its mysterious ways of workings, had given D. D. Palmer a medical type practice, complete with patients and, as would be expected, he immediately set about developing the art. It was, therefore, D. D. Palmer alone who developed the early manipulations, adjustments and other physical moves that went into the initial practice of chiropractic.
Carver had the background in anatomy from the dissections and study dating from his farming days, and also had the advantages of a superior education but he had no patients only law clients. He began very early to set about establishing the scientific basis and later made repeated claims to being the developer of the scientific aspects of chiropractic while defending and upholding D. D Palmer’s claim of being its discoverer. Carver writes in his history that he began the study of chiropractic December 10, 1895, – which put him exactly 84 days behind D. D. Palmer. But men had 10 or more years of background and study prior to September 18, 1895, so they were about as well prepared as men could be to produce something new.
Bartlett Joshua Palmer began his 13th year in the same month and year his father discovered chiropractic. And he was a little boy with more troubles than any youngster deserved. We may never know for sure the extent of some things we know to be true in essence, or how much effect they had on history. It is often said that his stepmother was oppressive to him, that D. D. was unnecessarily abusive and strict on him in order to appease his wife, and that D. D. was often absent for extended periods in search of peace, which B. J. couldn’t leave to get.
His schooling was neglected; he finally dropped out of school at age 13. The next several years were unhappy, with a decided lack of parental guidance and he was not prepared scholastically, nor was he encouraged to prepare himself in any other way for the future by either parent. It is perfectly safe to say that the seeds of hatred between himself and his father were sown in these years because that bitterness eventually became a consuming passion and was widely known even by casual acquaintances of either. Both talked about it, wrote about it, and blamed the other for it.
Meanwhile D. D. Palmer continued with his patients and constantly worked on developing the art of chiropractic, so his practice was slowly switched over from that of magnetic healing to chiropractic. For a period of about three years he continued to be the sole practitioner and taught no one else anything unless he corresponded with Carver, which circumstances suggest he did.
But he had an accident at a railroad crossing somewhere in Illinois, according to Carver, and taught a young man named LeRoy Baker enough chiropractic to treat his injuries which were stated to be “serious in nature,” and the treatment was said to have been very advantageous to D. D. Palmer.
On January 15, 1898, Dr. William A. Seeley, a homeopathic physician, paid D. D. Palmer $500.00 cash for a period of instruction covering 8 to 10 weeks, and he goes in the history books as the first paying student of chiropractic; and the occasion marks the beginning of the first chiropractic college.
Other students followed. There were 3 in 1899; 2 in 1900; 5 in 1901; and in 1902, 4 one of whom was B. J. Palmer [at age 20]. In April, 1906, the Palmer school had 21 students and was beginning to develop an alumni. Each graduate left the school convinced that the chiropractic adjustment was a meritorious addition to the therapies then available to relieve the miseries of the sick and suffering. This last point is well illustrated by the adventures of Dr. Alma C. Arnold who came to New York City as its first chiropractor in 1902 – in truth she was about 8% of all chiropractors at the time. Dr. Arnold soon had Miss Clara Barton as a patient. Miss Barton as a patient. Miss Barton had been so seriously injured in an accident that her physicians said that if she did live she would never walk again because of her spinal injuries. But Dr. Arnold was consulted and subsequently restored her to complete health; and Clara Barton went on her way, ultimately becoming the founder of the American Red Cross.
Palmer taught the art of chiropractic and a philosophy behind its application, leaving plenty of room for diverse opinions; and his early graduates certainly had a diversity of options at their beck and call.
Dr. S. M. Langworthy, a 1901 graduate, established the Langworthy School of Chiropractic in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was later joined by Drs. Minora Paxton and Oakley G. Smith, and the school’s name was changed to the American Chiropractic College. By June, 1906, there were seven fairly well known chiropractic schools, each conducted by D. D. Palmer graduates, each instructing a different philosophy of chiropractic but each teaching in their beginnings the same art of practice that was developed by D. D. However, they soon began adding to the existing techniques. Some of the additions were worthy but others were only ineffective notions that destiny soon phased out.
Dr. B. J. Palmer graduated from his father’s school in 1902 at 20 years of age. His father, in September or October of the same year suddenly decided to go to the Pacific Coast and, with little fanfare, packed up all the furnishings from the 21 room sanitarium at Ryan Block and shipped them to Portland, Oregon. B. J. was left with an unexpired lease valued at several thousands of dollars and an empty building along with, B. J. said later, “many debts” – and he was 21 years old, barely.
Willard Carver’s uncle, the “Uncle Howard Nutting” came to B. J.’s rescue, refurbished the place and put it back in business, and Dr. B. J. Palmer took over the business, practice, sanitarium and school.
Enter Willard Carver again. This time he was sick with a fever, thought to be typhoid, complete with delirium, which, when subsided, encouraged him to board the train at Oskaloosa, Iowa, and go to Davenport expecting to find Dr. D. D. there to minister to him. Dr. B. J. said he could handle it in his father’s absence and treated Carver for several weeks.
D. D. Palmer returned from the West coast in 1904 and joined his son in practice and in conducting the business of the school. For the next short interval of time it was managed by D. D. with B. J.’s assistance, who, for the last time, assumed the role of dutiful son.
It is perhaps time to pause in the narration of events and examine a most instructive part of all three of these men. If we recognize their weaknesses as well as their strengths it goes a long way toward understanding the events of the next decade, which was an extremely critical period of chiropractic history. We will soon discover their personal troubles and ambitions were mixed into their teachings with such vehemence that there was division in chiropractic, and this explains many otherwise inexplicable events in early Texas Chiropractic history.
With this in mind let us consider first the weaknesses of Willard Carver, who, although a man of many virtues, had as his outstanding weakness an unforgiving, uncompromising attitude. He would attempt to destroy his enemies in almost any way short of physical violence. He had a touch of the arrogant and a measure of the imperious along with entirely too much conviction that he couldn’t be wrong; an attitude which kept him from being able to apologize, even when he needed to. He had a bulldog’s attitude when he came to grips with an enemy; and the idea of forgive or forget was foreign to him. Neither was there an ounce of fear in him.
In his later years he was distrustful and somewhat disillusioned. He felt that almost everyone was out to take advantage of him, which is the natural consequence for a man constantly on the attack for so many years.
It was just as much a weakness that he would protect his friends with as hot a weapon a he could forge, even defending his more worthless friends who, on occasion, were taking dishonest advantage of him at the very time he was engaged in protecting them.
When he was proven wrong beyond any doubt and forced to change his opinion it was still a very small comfort because he did it in a way usually self-protective and damaging to the ego of the one whose very idea he received.
That he was unquestionably brilliant, inventive, resourceful, and many years ahead of his time, as the saying goes, was almost, but not quite, overshadowed by his personality. It is easy to think that had his personality been different he would have gone much further. Perhaps that’s true, but it’s just as true that he may not have gone anywhere at all with a more congenial set of traits. Those were though years and it took hard men to do anything more than just eat and breathe.
Dr. B. J. Palmer in later life became a vainglorious individual with an ambition that couldn’t be comfortably lived with by his peers. He thought of himself as the source and fountainhead of all things chiropractic; and he issued edicts which he fully expected to be accepted as scientific truths and acted upon by all chiropractors. Many of his students, impressed by his teachings and showmanship, unquestionably believed his every word so there were too few humbling experiences of him to maintain a proper emotional balance.
He was extremely possessive, driving to eliminate all competitors in whatever area he could. He wanted only one chiropractic college: his. He wanted only one defense organization for chiropractic: his. He wanted only one theory taught: his. It was supposed to be B. J. all the way. Such attitudes guarantee, even invite, friction even with the most lenient of personalities, but when mixed with D. D. Palmer’s ideas and Willard Carver’s feelings, open warfare was about the best that could be reasonably expected.
B. J. was essentially an untutored man who could barely read or write until his full adult years. His father’s failure to love him, to communicate with him and educate him was the undoubted source of his adult desire to overcome all obstacles, to succeed so greatly that all his faults would be buried beneath a mountain of praise. And the college was to be his vehicle to achieve these goals. It is no wonder he wanted no competition.
Dr. J. Lamoine De Rusha, dean emeritus of the Northwestern College of Chiropractic in Minneapolis, sheds some light on the relationship involved. He credits Carver, along with D. D. Palmer, as being far sighted, scientific minded men who contributed mightily in the form of writings and observations that were put to practical used by chiropractors all over the country.
But he is of more mixed reaction concerning B. J. He considered B. J. invaluable also, but an occasional embarrassment at the same time. On one occasion in Minneapolis B. J. was invited to speak at the annual convention of Minnesota chiropractors. Upon arrival he parked his car diagonally across the sidewalk in front of the hotel where it remained the three days of the convention; and at another convention in Kansas, B. J. walked backwards down the hotel hallways; at another gathering he emulated Mark Twain by having it announced that he had died, only to show up the next day announcing that the previous announcement was a premature statement.
B. J.’s love of the limelight, however, served the budding profession very well on other occasions. He started a program that reached almost every show business celebrity and prominent personality in America allowing them to receive free chiropractic care. In this way the names of many famous personalities were soon linked quite favorably with the profession.
His great strength was showmanship and the ability to enter the limelight. He was also to become an astute businessman who knew how to manage his affairs competently. He was personally a powerful force in the early chiropractic years and the Palmer Chiropractic College has remained a force in chiropractic through the years. How he acquired possession of the college and how he achieved his position of leadership must be known before a proper understanding of his role can be reached. The Palmer Chiropractic College still remains the largest of all chiropractic institutions. Its teachings have altered drastically from the B. J. years but Palmer Chiropractic College graduates still seem to have a loyalty and a strength in their inner recesses that other schools rarely inspire.
D. D. Palmer’s son didn’t love him and that fact probably illustrates his chief problem: D. D. Palmer didn’t take care of the things under his control, being prone to junk valuable possessions on the spur of the moment.
Despite his brilliance in so many ways he was a wanderlust at heart. His sense of values and feelings of loyalty were suspect to say the least. Before it was all over he would have been denied association in working with his son in the Palmer school, he would be asked to leave the Carver Chiropractic College by a sorrowful and shocked Willard Carver, and he soon broke off association with the other Oklahoma City Chiropractic Colleges, especially the one instituted by Dr. John Kent in which he was an instructor for a while. He was the originator of a string of colleges in the states of Washington, Oregon, California, and Colorado, only one of which ever became a permanent institution, the Western States Chiropractic College, and that due to the administration of others, because D. D. soon abandoned it. Those who were the closest to him and who would have willingly according him praises and honors, found him to be unpredictable, unreliable, and erratic. When he died, thousands of men would have given him honor but his personality somehow couldn’t stand praise – those that knew him least honored him most.
None of the three men had any overdose of humility. Carver and B. J. repeatedly call themselves the developers of the science portion of chiropractic; D. D. Palmer, referring back to the adjustment he had given Harvey Lillard, avowed it to be the first adjustment and near perfect; “There has never been given another with that degree of perfectness,” he said on several occasions. And B. J. was well known as an egotist of the first degree, which conclusion will be well supported by reading a sampling of his articles and speeches.
But their personal traits notwithstanding, each of these men was absolutely indispensable to the budding profession of chiropractic and each contributed mightily to its initial growth. Their faults may have caused them each much personal grief but these very idiosyncrasies were needed by the chiropractic profession to cope with the world it would enter. D. D. Palmer, for example, was the only one who had patients to physically work on and experiment with. If he had not been in practice in magnetic healing then the very discovery of chiropractic would have been a most unlikely event because the possibility of discovery itself would have been missing. We can only speculate about the same observations being accomplished by B. J. years later – which is exceedingly doubtful. Willard Carver, it is true, was thinking about “Relatolity” but had no treatment procedure in mind and no patient with which to demonstrate its effectiveness. Since he was successfully practicing law, the probability of his giving that up and of somehow duplicating D. D.’s feat would be infinitesimally small.
It was D. D. who stubbornly nursed the embryo idea from 1895 (and before) through 1902 when B. J. graduated and was able, though quite unprepared at 21 years of age, to keep the college and practice alive when D.D.’s leaving for the northwest coast would have killed it for a certainty. D. D. Palmer was the establisher of the college. It was his enthusiasm alone that secured the first students and taught them the physical application of the art of chiropractic as he, and he alone, had developed it. It shall probably never be known why, after years of stubborn, patient study, teaching, and desire to achieve, he suddenly felt the urge to abandon everything and leave the students, the college and his practice behind. But that’s exactly what he did and it became the pattern for his life. An on that day B. J.’s tremendous ambition and ego served its greatest purpose as he rose to the occasion. Small wonder he felt as protective and possessive of the whole profession as he did. If D. D. was its discoverer, and the man who developed the first artful techniques, then B. J. was its perpetrator. And he, though undereducated, was certainly endowed with a showman’s sense of the magnificent. It was B. J. who would send graduates out into a world of combat where their inspiration and dogged determination to survive were their chief weapons. D. D. Palmer’s graduates never had any semblance of unity – as a matter of fact they went everywhere teaching many varieties of chiropractic, many of them opening schools of their own – but B. J.’s were, if anything, too united and loyal to B. J., following his ideas years after they were abandoned by other chiropractors, even the Palmer School itself.
Willard Carver was still practicing law: the Palmers were among his law clients and most likely shared every secret with him in that period of time. He had been, according to the history authored by him, contributing to the theories and scientific background of chiropractic through personal contact and letters with D. D. for several years: not however, initially with B. J. because of his tender years. The probability of Carver and B. J. having serious discussions about scientific matters prior to 1902 is unlikely in the extreme. Serious discussions afterward were also unlikely due to the explosive personality clashes between them.
Carver later performed legal services for both the Palmers, as will be related shortly, but it must be remembered that he counted as a friend the old man, D.D.
Carver would enter chiropractic college, graduating in June, 1906, but it was not to be the Palmer Chiropractic School, because it was under B. J.’s control. Even while a student Carver struck an arrangement whereby he began teaching the scientific principles of chiropractic, which incident will be related in its proper place.
It was Carver who personally, and with the later influence of Judge Charles S. Evans, set about creating that great body of common law the profession must eventually have. Carver had the legal, logical and argumentative mind needed to sell it to the courts and legislatures, and he also had the training needed to write laws and present arguments for their acceptance in correct form. He was tenacious and bold. This was the man who would later tackle the entire Senate of the State of Oklahoma, be found in contempt of that body, and be jailed over the incident. And he never did apologize.
B. J. of course, was not idle – especially in Kansas and Iowa – and his defense organization featured the fantastic Tom Morris. B. J. testified in courts personally at every opportunity, and his dramatic mannerisms were extremely effective. Since the bulk of the chiropractic graduates were graduates from his school he was called upon more often than any other man as the foremost expert on chiropractic affairs. He not only accepted that role but demanded that everyone else accept it too.
But it was Willard Carver who wrote the chiropractic licensing laws which were adopted verbatim by Arkansas and almost verbatim in Oklahoma. He submitted model laws in North Dakota, Iowa, and Kansas and, when finally passed, they would still be recognized as lawyer Willard Carver products, amended as they had to be in order to pass the legislatures. Those were the hallmark laws of the chiropractic profession and still are today. Oklahoma, incidentally, got its law by a popular vote of the people, an election engineered by Carver and associates, after they had been outmaneuvered in the Senate.
These three, D. D. Palmer, B. J. Palmer, and Willard Carver, were THE men who would protect chiropractic in the courts, the legislatures, and the public mind, and bring it into some degree of maturity where it could reasonably be expected to survive.
Returning to the narration at the point we left it, we can now understand why certain events happened as they did, the story being unduly complicated until we understand the personalities. D. D. had returned from the west coast in 1904, and he and B. J. were jointly operating their practices and the school. Willard Carver, practicing law in Oskaloosa, Iowa, made the acquaintance of Dr. Charles R. Parker when Parker came to his home for the express purpose of meeting him, stating that “Dad” Palmer spoke highly of him in classes – even while criticizing the things Carver wrote him. These remarks inspired Parker so that he wanted to meet Carver personally. They made an agreement to mutually instruct each other as opportunity permitted, but Carver was unable to spend any considerable amount of time with him because of his law practice.
An accident in September, 1905, threatened Carver severely and he went to Ottumwa where Parker had established the Parker School of Chiropractic; and Carver, forced to stay for extended treatment, enrolled as a student in a peculiar arrangement whereby he lectured his fellow students, and Dr Parker, on scientific things; especially emphasizing those points with which he differed from D. D. Palmer.
Carver graduated in June, 1906, and returned to Oskalooa, intending to resume his law practice, but never reestablished it, being continually busy with patients.
Dr. Carver, we must remember, had been associated with chiropractic for a minimum of 12 years but was just now seeing his first patients, and finally putting his theories to test. He was to unceasingly produce a tremendous volume of study and writings in the refinements of science and the art of chiropractic in the years to follow.
The friendship between he and the Palmers, one suspects, must have been strained more than usual during this interval to time he was in college because he was not notified of the next event until it was almost over. The mere fact Carver did not enroll in the Palmer School of Chiropractic also suggests a deteriorating relationship – or, just as likely, the competitive personalities needed to be kept apart. Neither B. J. nor D. D. Palmer would likely ever have allowed Carver to teach in their school.
In early 1906 both D. D. and B. J. Palmer were indicted for practicing medicine without a license in Scott County, Iowa. Both had been released on bond. D. D. Palmer had been tried in April, 1906, hiring a local attorney for his defense, and had been found guilty, fined $100.00 and costs and put in jail until the fine was paid. He elected to stay there as a form of protest.
Dr. Carver, still in Ottumua, was notified by Dr. B. J. Palmer by telegram, “Father in jail – come to Davenport at once. B. J. Palmer.” He arrived the next morning by train and the three of them met in D. D. Palmer’s cell to discuss the whole business.
Carver recommended that the governor be petitioned for a pardon – especially since Governor Cummins knew and respected Dr. Carver – but complications developed that delayed the pardon. Many steps were taken in the next few days to protect the Palmers’ personal interests, usually guided by Willard Carver’s legal advice. In a surprise move D. D. abruptly decided to pay his fine, being thoroughly tired of jail in his two week stay. He came home only to be met by B. J. who told him he didn’t want him around any more. This sudden rejection was a mysterious and private event and is still not clearly understood.
Two sides to that story remain. B. J. later insisted that a fair agreement was made between him and his father and was said to have produced a signed document relating to the settlement. D. D. said he was thrust out with nothing. At any rate Dr. D. D. Palmer went to Medford, Oklahoma, where he purchased a small grocery store and practiced chiropractic in his spare time until the spring of 1907.
The conflicting personalities and the competitiveness had been taking their toll on friendships for some time. The rift between father and son was now a chasm beyond repair although a three months’ truce was to come about in the summer of 1913, almost six years ahead. Relations between Carver and B. J. were headed downhill yet Carver and D. D. were to remain friends for a while longer.
For D. D. Palmer the effects of his fading star were disastrous. He regarded himself, quite justifiably, as the originator of chiropractic, as the founder of the first arts, as the teacher of the first students and the establisher of the first college. The infant profession was about to begin a fantastic upward climb but where was he, the foundation of it all?
Just out of jail; pushed out of the school; his practice usurped; in a strange city, selected only because his brother had residence there; and practicing chiropractic part time. There is no wonder he was bitter and was to become increasingly so. His personality surely played no small part in all those results but events did not inspire him to any improvement.
Just how large a part his personality played is conjecture but it is well known that the early chiropractors revered D. D. Palmer and he was universally known and respected in the profession. Even today his accomplishments are admired and his personal traits ignored. But the fact still remains: no one could work with D. D. for any length of time.
Carver journeyed to Medford in February, 1907, and met with D. D., his old friend, and D. D. told him his version of all that had transpired. Events suggest that Willard Carver had, by this time, served his last legal duty for the Palmers. The last act was probably when he arranged to try for D. D.’s pardon and tried to make their business safe to pursue. He had then advised that for safety’s sake the school be publicly put in the name of a certain medical doctor, then studying chiropractic at the school, Dr. M. P. Brown. The school was still being run and operated, of course, for and by the Palmers but Dr. Brown appeared to be in charge to the authorities. Carver advised that all property be put in trust in the name of some disinterested party until the principles could safely take it again openly to themselves, one being convicted an the other still under indictment.
Some of the property, most of it in fact, was transferred to Mable Palmer, B. J.’s wife, by mutual consent of father and son, but against the advice of Carver. This may have been the basis for B. J. later telling his father, “You have no property here,” and the cross purposes now evident between father and son certainly dictated a change in legal counselors.
When these things occurred Dr. B. J. Palmer was twenty-four years of age, Carver was forty, D. D. was sixty-one. All of a sudden, B. J. had no competitors of any consequence and he was, for a few months, the dominant figure in chiropractic in the whole United States.
Meanwhile Dr. L. L. Denny had found what he thought would be a good location in Oklahoma City for a college and he wired Carver to “come and bring money.” Denny and Carver had planned for some time to open a college of chiropractic when the time was right. Arrangements were soon made and the Carver-Denny Chiropractic College opened its doors for students in October, 1906.
This college was one of many small ones opened up in the midwest – indeed there were six in Oklahoma City in 1907 – but it was to become the Carver Chiropractic College after Carver bought Denny’s interest in August, 1908. It was this college that was to grow into the first substantial competitor to B. J. Palmer and the Palmer Chiropractic School.
These two competitors would be the source for most of the doctors drifting southward into Texas from the early 1900’s to the 1920’s. These doctors would be indoctrinated, of course, by their teachers in the schools, but few realized how long, how deep, and how professionally hurtful this division would be.
Again, a small preview of coming events is necessary for understanding. Note that this particular period of time is the beginning of chiropractic in Texas as well as the beginning of chiropractic itself. The story of the friction in these men’s personalities is also the story of the division of chiropractic in Texas, and it dates to the beginning and goes to the founders themselves.
Dr. D. D. Palmer himself played a surprisingly small part in it. The division was chiefly between Dr. B. J. Palmer and Dr. Willard Carver. Later on the Texas Chiropractic College would exert its considerable influence and would pursue about the same general philosophical course as the Carver Chiropractic College. A look at D. D.’s statistics will be very convincing and show the small part he played.
Although the discovery was first made in September, 1895, it was held privately until the first student in September, 1898. During the years 1899 through 1902, there were 14 students, making 15 in all when he left for the West Coast. He returned in 1904. No statistics are available regarding the number of students in 1903, 1904, and 1905. But for interest’s sake, we do know the identities of seven: Dr. Oakley G. Smith 1899, Dr. Jones in 1900, and Drs. Sutton, Story and S. M. Langworthy in 1901; and Dr. Emma Arnold in 1902 or before. D. D. returned from the coast in 1904 and through January or February, 1906, worked with B. J. at college. There were 21 students enrolled in 1906 when D. D. was jailed and he never completed the year, being thrust out and finally going to Medford, Oklahoma.
Allowing a reasonable figure for 1905 and at which time D. D. was present at Palmer Chiropractic School, it appears that D. D. taught or had a hand in teaching between 36 and 60 chiropractors with 21 of them still being students during his arrest, trial, and jail term. That he did much substantial teaching to those 21 during the trying days of his arrest and trial is hard to accept.
Add to that act that we know of at least 14 colleges by 1907, seven of them in Oklahoma City, and each taught its own brand of chiropractic methods and philosophy; certainly D. D. taught and influenced them but his teachings did not dominate them. neither did D. D. have a growing influence nor any power base such as a school or institution. Very sorrowfully for him, his influence was waning and would continue to lessen year by year. From this time on he would be the wandered, the occasional guest lecturer, the man whose attitude caused him to be castaway from the profession he originated.
From the time that D. D. and B. J. split, Carver and B. J. became the most bitter of enemies. They were spiteful, hurtful, jealous, competitive for honor, glory, and ascendancy and, finally, were both downright childish in their actions and writings relating to each other.
They developed vastly divergent philosophies in their chiropractic teaching and used different terminology to explain the few things they both taught alike. Neither would follow the other. What had begun as a personality clash thereby grew into a professional separation which would not lessen perceptibly in Texas until the 1960’s and 1970’s when the Texas Chiropractic College graduates finally became the dominating force and the theories of Dr. W. D. Harper, Jr. became the replacement for the early teaching of both Carver and B. J.
In its early years, particularly when the influence and enthusiasm of Dr. J. R. Drain was young, the Texas Chiropractic College advertised the teaching of “Palmer Methods” and the use of “Palmer Books” but it slowly became more independent and in the 1930’s and 1940’s frequently clashed with B. J. The Texas school never openly lined up or took sides, but its teachings were much closer philosophically and scientifically in later years with the Carver teachings. This trend was verified by Dr. H. W. Watkins, a 1921 graduate of Texas Chiropractic College, who closely followed the affairs of the school for many years.
A lot of the history of chiropractic in Texas hinges on this division, especially in the almost constant existence of dual state associations and the ever difficult quest toward licensure, made almost impossible because the two associations became two very divided groups which each insisted on licensure on its terms or no licensure at all.
Dr. D. D. Palmer wrote his book, The Science, Art and Philosophy of Chiropractic, and it was published in 1910 but, in truth, it didn’t stand a chance of being influential. It was not widely distributed over any considerable length of time and it gained more influence in the decade of 1960-1970 than ever before, and that because of a nostalgia wave in the chiropractic colleges. Few chiropractors practicing today have ever seen a copy of D. D.’s book and in all probability not one in a thousand could quote from any portion of it.
During and after the period D. D. Palmer worked and practiced at Medford, Oklahoma, he occasionally lectured at some chiropractic school as an honored guest but at none regularly, nor for any length of time. He would soon be dead and the manner of his injury and death made the split between B. J. and Carver reach its lowest depths.
