D.D. Palmer
Daniel David Palmer or D.D. Palmer (March 7, 1845  October 20, 1913) was the founder of Chiropractic.

# Biography
Palmer was born in Pickering, Ontario, near Toronto, Canada to Katherine McVay and Thomas Palmer. At age twenty he moved to the United States with his family.  Palmer held various jobs as a beekeeper, school teacher, and grocery store owner, and had an interest in the various health philosophies of his day, such as magnetic healing, and Spiritualism.  Palmer practiced magnetic healing beginning in the mid-1880s in Burlington, Iowa, and Davenport, Iowa.
Palmer read medical journals of his time and followed developments throughout the world regarding anatomy and physiology.  While working as a magnetic healer in Davenport, Iowa, he encountered a deaf janitor who he discovered had a palpable lump in his back. He theorized that the lump and his deafness were related. After a reported successful restoration of the man's hearing, it led to the beginning of Chiropractic history.  His theories revolved around the concept that altered nerve flow was the cause of all disease, and that misaligned spinal vertebrae had an effect on the nerve flow. He postulated that restoring these vertebra to their proper alignment would restore health.
Palmer founded a school based on his work that would become the Palmer School of Chiropractic in 1897.  By 1902 the school had graduated 15 chiropractors.  In 1906, Palmer was prosecuted under the new medical arts law in Iowa for practicing medicine without a license, and chose to go to jail instead of paying the fine. As a result, he spent 17 days in jail, but then elected to pay the fine. Shortly thereafter, he sold the school of chiropractic to his son, B. J. Palmer. With the help of an arbitration committee, the deal was settled for $2,196.79, various books, and some specimens from the osteological collection. As soon as the sale of the school was finalized, D.D. Palmer went to the West Coast, where he helped to found chiropractic schools in Oklahoma, California, and Oregon.
The relationship with his son BJ was tenuous and often bitter, especially after the sale of his school. Their subsequent disagreements regarding the direction of the emerging field of chiropractic were evident in D.D. Palmer's writings.  Even the circumstances surrounding his death were postulated to be attributable to BJ.  Court records reflect that during a founders day parade in Davenport in August 1913, DD was marching on foot and was allegedly struck from behind by a car driven by BJ. Others denied he was struck by BJ's vehicle. He died in Los Angeles, California on October 20, 1913.  The official cause of death was typhoid fever, though some believe it was the consequence of his injuries.  The courts exonerated BJ of any responsibility for his father's death.

# Palmer's fundamental idea
D.D. Palmer's effort to find a single cause for all disease led him to say:

# Palmer's mysticism
D.D. Palmer was a man with subjective and personal religious beliefs. As an active spiritist, he said he "received chiropractic from the other world" from a deceased medical physician named Dr. Jim Atkinson.
According to B. J. Palmer "Father often attended the annual Mississippi Valley Spiritualists Camp Meeting at Clinton, Iowa... That is where he first received messages from Dr. Jim Atkinson on the principles of chiropractic." Such messages were normally received during seances, but Palmer claimed to have received them through "inspiration".
In his book, The Chiropractor (published posthumously, 1914), Palmer described the situation:
He regarded chiropractic as partly religious in nature. In a letter of May 4, 1911 he said:
In his 1914 book, the first chapter expanded on his religious views of chiropractic: "The Moral and Religious Duty of a Chiropractor". In it he dealt with religious liberty and stated:
Later in the book he distanced himself from actually renaming the profession to the "religion of chiropractic" and discussed the differences between a formal, objective religion and a personal, subjective ethical religious belief. (p. 6) He reaffirmed that chiropractors have a religious and moral duty, and ended the first chapter by stating:

# Detractors
Palmer met opposition and was accused of being a crank and a quack. An 1894 edition of the local paper, the Davenport Leader, wrote:

# Quotes
The following quotes are from D.D. Palmer's book, The Chiropractor's Adjuster (also called The Text-Book of the Science, Art and Philosophy of Chiropractic). The book was published in 1910 by the Portland Printing House Company of Portland, Oregon, and reprinted in 1966 by his grandson, David D. Palmer, 1966.
- Disease:  The kind of disease depends upon what nerves are too tense or too slack.
- Chiropractic for intellectual abnormalities:  Chiropractors correct abnormalities of the intellect as well as those of the body.
- Life and Religion:  "I have answered the time-worn question  what is life?: The dualistic system  spirit and body  united by intellectual life  the soul  is the basis of this science of biology
- "There can be no healing without Teaching..."
- "There is a vast difference between treating effects and adjusting the causes."

# Bibliography
- The Chiropractor's Adjuster (also called The Text-Book of the Science, Art and Philosophy of Chiropractic), Daniel David Palmer, Portland Printing House, 1910 (reprint:  1966).