For a more extensive timeline check out this article.
Texas has “always” desired to regulate medical practice. The first medical practice act was incorporated into Constitution of the Republic of Texas in 1837. It was repealed ten years later and Texas did not regulate the practice of medicine again until after the Civil War in 1873.
We are, or should be, familiar with the basics of “chiropractic history” with D. D. Palmer’s healing practices which began in 1888 and culminated with the development of the healing art of chiropractic in 1895. Sometime after 1900 chiropractic arrived in Texas, but how did it get here. The details are a bit murky, but connecting the dots is pretty straightforward.
In 1898 D. D. Palmer added to his list of students one Andrew P. Davis of Texas. It is thought that somewhere between 1903 and 1905 one or more of the fewer than twenty students of D.D. Palmer, or perhaps one of their students, arrived in Texas to practice chiropractic.
While it can safely be said that Andrew P. Davis was the first “Texas Chiropractor” the distinction of who the first chiropractor in Texas was is at this point unclear. Perhaps it was a “Dr. Guy” who established a chiropractic school in Dallas in 1906, or Dr. J. N. Stone, who established the City College for Chiropractic in San Antonio in 1910.
But however it occurred and whoever it was, shortly after chiropractic arrived in Texas it became active with the public and within a handful of years sought to make it absolutely lawful for chiropractic doctors to practice the healing art of their choosing.
