A Brief History of Chiropractic
Chiropractic was discovered in 1895 when D.D. Palmer, who was experimenting in magnetic and other natural healing, came across his building janitor who had lost most of his hearing after hearing an audible “pop” in his spine. Palmer being a good scientist of the day associated the two, examined the janitor, found a spinal vertebra that he deduced was out of place, and proceeded to set the bone. The janitor, Harvey Lillard, recovered most of his hearing, Palmer thought that he had discovered the cure for deafness, and he proceeded to treat many hearing deficient patients. To our knowledge, no other cases of deafness were cured, but the patients that were treated were seeing improvement in other ailments that had not been disclosed prior to treatment.
B.J. Palmer took over and developed his father’s accidental discovery into an art and a science by helping his father to establish the first chiropractic college in Davenport, Iowa in 1897. Doctors from these early days struggled to interpret results obtained with spinal manipulation. From this came a mostly body-mechanics based profession with a proliferation of techniques or methods used to treat bones out of place that cause pain and dysfunction.
Chiropractic Now
There are still many methods of chiropractic to treat the body, and when there are many ways to accomplish the same thing, that thing is poorly understood. Dr. Aaron DeGraffenreid D.C. has been trained in a method called Advanced Biostructural CorrectionTM (ABCTM) which is renowned for its effectiveness and consistency, as well as its ability to change and correct underlying body structure. ABCTM may not have all the answers and is probably not the last thing in mechanical treatment of the body, but it gets very close.
Dr. Jesse Jutkowitz D.C. developed the ABCTM method out of personal necessity in the early 1990’s. When Jutkowitz graduated from chiropractic college and applied the methods taught to him from school to active practice, a tremendous lack of consistency with results was observed. Some patients would get better, some patients would fail to improve, and some patients would get downright worse. The lack of consistent results drove Jutkowitz, who had some background in engineering physics, to do his own research and develop his own method with more consistent outcomes. Jutkowitz was the first chiropractor in over a century to effectively apply engineering principles to the body to understand what was truly happening with mechanical breakdown and correction of the body, and is the reason our office is able to reproduce before and after pictures like these.
1. First and foremost, we are talking about correcting body-mechanics and pain associated with poor mechanics. Most pain issues can be attributed to poor body-mechanics. (Nearly all other pain issues are a result of cancer, infections, fractures, and the like. These conditions are medical referrals and are not treated within our office.) Regarding body mechanics, everything in the body is interconnected mechanically. It is difficult to fix a neck problem without balancing everything below the neck. Likewise it is difficult to correct a low back problem without balancing everything above the low back. This is why other therapists and doctors who only treat the site of pain struggle to get consistent results. Mechanical problems with people’s bodies are rarely straightforward and thus rarely have direct causal relationships. Because of this principle, we are very thorough and treat patients from head to toe to address bones out of place that are not symptomatic but contribute to the overall mechanical condition, and are necessary to get that condition to resolve.
2. Second, our bodies are very good at fixing themselves. If we cut ourselves, we are able to grow new skin and heal. Likewise, if a bone goes out of place and our body is able to self-correct itself, it usually will. This is why when we stretch and joints pop back into place it feels good. Bodies cannot fix everything though, and this is why Dr. DeGraffenreid has a job, and why so many people have unresolved mechanical issues with their bodies. Some bones will go out of place and the body is unable to self-correct them. 
