The natural healing art of chiropractic was first developed by a magnetic healer named D.D. Palmer in 1895. According to history, it all started when Harvey Lillard — a man who was deaf in one ear — went in to see Palmer for his condition hoping that he had something up his sleeve to cure the deafness.

When Palmer learned that Lillard suffered a head injury that preceded his condition, he evaluated his spine and noticed that a vertebra in the upper back seemed wildly out of alignment. According to Palmer:

“I had a case of heart trouble which was not improving. I examined the spine and found a displaced vertebra pressing against the nerves, which innervate the heart. I adjusted the vertebra and gave immediate relief — nothing ‘accidental’ or ‘crude’ about this. Then I began to reason if two diseases, so dissimilar as deafness and heart trouble, came from impingement, a pressure on nerves, were not other disease due to a similar cause? Thus the science (knowledge) and art (adjusting) of Chiropractic were formed at that time.”

Palmer coined his manual therapy technique chiropractic, which comes from the two Greek words cheiros and praktikos (meaning “with hands”). Since then, countless millions of people across the globe have benefited from this manual therapy that some sources date back to Hippocrates.