Daniel David Palmer was a self-educated (as were many people before
the turn of the century) magnetic healer, with a large practice in
Davenport, Iowa. In this booming, raucous river boat town on the 
Mississippi, Palmer started magnetic healing in
a conventional manner by using the energy
from his hands to charge up a patient , sort
of like a weak car battery would get a trickle
charge and start (heal).

But now, though Lillard, Palmer was on a new
track - with a new way to look at the energetic
problem of healing and health. Palmer began
his study of the spine. Eventually, using the
bony processes used for muscular attachments
and movement, he levered the spinal bone back into position and
freed the full nerve flow to the body.

"Voila", he accidentally discovered how to jump start healing
in the body. Chiropractic was born.

What made this different from the gross manipulation
used in the past was the understanding of the global implications of this method as a distinct healing art.
Palmer was a genius, but had an abrasive personality
ill suited to the promotion of chiropractic. His son B.J. Palmer (right) was the marketeer, educator, and
inventor that carried the chiropractic torch for the
next sixty years. B.J. built Palmer School of
Chiropractic in Davenport, which became the premier chiropractic college in the world at that time.