The chiropractors who, as the American Bureau of Chiropractic, met in Manhattan last week, saw no fun in the pun and joke played on them by the new Encyclopedia Britannica. Explained therein in immediate sequence are Chiromancy (Palmistry), Chiron (centaur wise in healing), Chiropodist, Chiropractic, Chiroptera (Bats). In chronicling Chiropractic the Encyclopedia commits one of its numerous errors. It pronounces B. J. Palmer the chief founder of the movement. The late Daniel David Palmer laid the foundations of chiropractic (1895). Bartholomew Josiah Palmer, his son, founded the Palmer School of Chiropractic (1903).
Bartholomew Josiah ("B. J.") Palmer attended last week's meeting. He is a middle-aged man with a scraggy mustache and Vandyke beard. His long, pomaded hair he kept away from his white shirt collar by looping a rubber band about it. His wife, Mabel Palmer, accompanied him.
He appreciated that all his audience knew what chiropractic is—"a system of adjustment consisting of palpitation of the spinal column to ascertain vertebral subluxations, followed by the adjustment of them by hand, in order to relieve pressure upon nerves at the intervertebra1. foramina so that nerve force may flow freely from the brain to the rest of the body"—more simply, manipulating the spinal column to relieve pressure on the nerves which pass through it.
He took for granted that all knew how his father started the movement. Daniel David Palmer was a "magnetic healer" who "cured" by laying his hands on innocents. One day a deaf Negro janitor came to him. The deafness had developed when "something broke in his back." Healer Palmer found a protuberance on the Negro's spinal column. He placed the man prone on the floor and knuckled the spine. After the "adjustment" the Negro could again hear, whence a new therapeutic art.
Hence Bartholomew Josiah Palmer restricted himself last week to advising his colleagues, colloquially, on how to boost their business, which seems generally in a poor way. One way was to use a diagnostic machine, a "neurocalometer," which he helped to invent. The chiropractor is to apply this apparatus to his patient's spine. It is supposed to indicate how poorly "nerve impulses" are flowing and thus to indicate where the chiropractor should lay his hands. Exhorted Dr. Palmer, characteristically: "You want to step up your results. I know you do, and it's only right you should, and I am now making it possible to help you. Now I have 50 neuro-calometers up in my room, and Mabel is up there and is perfectly willing to take away from you—so long as those neuro-calometers last—150 simoleons [dollars] each, so that you can take those neuro-calometers home and begin to build up your business."