Chiropractic was born in 1895, in Davenport, Iowa (USA), from the works of a magnetic healer, David Daniel Palmer.
His formulation of chiropractic theory and practice was developed following a manual correction, that he will later call an "adjustment", to Harvey Lillard, in September 1895 (coincidentally and significantly the same year Roentgen discovered x-rays).
History has it that this "adjustment", given about the level of the 4th. thoracic vertebra, would have contributed to the return of Mr. Lillard's hearing.
Starting with the same reasoning that had allowed him to elaborate this treatment, Palmer applied a similar thought process to other individuals presenting a variety of problems, using each time the spinous process of a vertebra as a short lever arm to produce an adjustment, which he was the first one to claim. Chiropractic was born as an art, a science and a philosophy.
Today, Chiropractic is legalized in the US, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and in all anglo-saxon countries, in Switzerland, Hungary, all of Northern Europe, the last countries, to date, having legislated the profession, being Belgium (fall 1999) and France (February 2002).
Chiropractic is also legal in Chili, Argentina, Mexico, Costa-Rica, Panama, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Cyprus, Jordan, South Africa, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.
In many other countries where the profession reaps a solid reputation, the right to practice is regulated by Common Law.
Chiropractic is the health profession that has known the largest growth in this century. It is now the Third largest health profession in the World, the Second largest in the USA (more than 80,000 practitioners currently and 95,000 forecast for 2010), the First largest manual health profession in the World (more than 3,000 students graduate from chiropractic school each year!)
