Chiropractic Foundations
D.D. Palmer's Traveling Library
Volume three

From The Preface:  

     The chiropractic story has been told many times. Any new telling should offer insight, novel connections, and a perspective that integrates what has come before by including a wider base of information and a more comprehensive theory. This book aspires to do just that. Included within these pages are many passages from the very books that D.D. Palmer studied in the years before he discovered chiropractic, books that would later become known as his “traveling library.” Also included is an entirely new perspective on chiropractic and most importantly on how philosophical issues can be discussed within the evolving chiropractic paradigm.

     In order to understand chiropractic in this new way, it is im-portant to attempt to view the world from Palmer’s perspective. Reading his traveling library is one way to do this. But we also need to understand the context in which those books were written and how the people of his era viewed the world. To do this well, an examination of Western philosophy is required because Palmer’s ideas can be linked not only to his library and his studies, but to the ideas that led up to his time.

     To fully understand Palmer’s perspective, we must take a genealogical approach, which is contextual and developmental. This situates Palmer not only in a time and a place but also within a worldview that evolved from the previous worldviews of human history. Rather than assuming that philosophers or healers of the past viewed the world in the same way that Palmer did, this approach utilizes cultural anthropology and develop­mental studies to show that Palmer’s very sense of self was a distinctly modern invention. And it is from this modern sense of self that a postmodern self emerges. I will argue that Palmer’s philosophy and his entire system of chiropractic was an attempt to fix the problems of the modern world by offering a post­modern solution. This argument will be supported by applying this genealogical approach to the history of philosophy and the development of the self over time.

     Integral Theory, developed by philosopher Ken Wilber, is arguably the most comprehensive map of reality ever created, as it incorporates the basic truths of the premodern, modern, and postmodern world. By applying Integral Theory to this genea­logical examination of Palmer’s worldview, we get a totally different perspective on chiropractic, its philosophy, and its foundation. Add to these the contents of the traveling library and we get a view of chiropractic that is compelling and unique, filled with depth, intrigue, and wonder.

     To examine the history of philosophy and the development of the self over time, we will rely on several historians and philosophers. Our emphasis will be to trace Palmer’s theories of Universal and Innate Intelligence through history, and how Palmer’s conception of his own self was shaped by this history. As we will see, his creation of chiropractic was a response to the inherent contradictions that the modern sense of self posed, such as the separation of mind and matter, spirit and nature, Science and Goodness.

     I will show how this modern self was marked by the separa­tion of the three great realms of philosophy: Beauty, Goodness, and Truth, or as Wilber often refers to them, Art, Morals, and Science. According to Wilber, the role of philosophy has always been to tie these three great domains together and the role of the postmodern world has been to contextualize and integrate them. By understanding Palmer in this wider context, we can see how he addressed the Big Three of philosophy in his creation of chiro­practic. His attempt to unite them was part of a new trend, and, as a result, Palmer may have created the first postmodern profession.

     Rather than view chiropractic history only as a protest school against modern medicine, we will look at it from a much broader perspective as a new discipline that attempted to rectify the great dilemmas created by the modern self. I will argue that Palmer’s “Science, Art, and Philosophy” was an attempt to integrate these big three domains of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness, an attempt that ultimately failed due to Palmer’s incorrect use of philosophy and his neglect of morals, both of which Palmer tried to redress  later in life. Palmer’s failure in philosophy mainly involved his confusion of Art and Science, Beauty and Truth, Spirit and Matter. By clarifying these confusions and reincorporating morals in Palmer’s highest sense, a new view of chiropractic emerges. This can best be done by using Integral Theory and examining Palmer’s sources from his pre-chiropractic studies in his traveling library.

     Integral Theory was developed by Wilber in a series of ten books written over the past twelve years. It includes more valid methods to critically view the world than any other theory. This is most evident in Wilber’s twenty-fifth book, Integral Spiri­tuality: A Startling New Role for Religion in the Modern and Postmodern World (2006). It is quite possibly the most important book on spirituality ever written. Wilber has basically combined eight well-known methodologies, which represent the most im-portant ways that human beings have come to understand reality. They are phenomenology (systematic introspection), developmental structuralism (how the individual develops over time), cognitive science (the organism’s ability to know), scientific empiricism, sociology, systems theory, ethnomethodology (such as cultural anthropology), and hermeneutics (the study of mean-ing). It is by applying these eight methods simultaneously to any field of inquiry that one can begin to arrive at an integral view of any discipline. Integral Theory acknowledges that none of these methods are privileged or contain an entire picture of reality, and each has an equally valid truth claim. For our purposes, we will only focus on a few of these methodologies, just enough to be sure that the present study is “integrally informed.”

     Not only has Wilber become one of the leading philosophers in America and the world, his approach is being applied in a postdisciplinary way by scholars in virtually every field, from psychology to medicine to politics. This is most evident in the recent journal launched by Integral Institute, AQAL: Journal of Integral Theory and Practice (2006/2007). The first volume represents forty authors and over 1,100 pages of scholarship. I am honored to sit on the journal’s editorial advisory board.

     And so you begin to see this author’s bias: integralism. I ac­knowledge that no one could be 100% wrong and that everyone has at least some truth claim worth investigating. Often it is one/eighth of the truth as many approaches take one of the eight methodologies and claim to contain all of the truth. I am not saying that everyone is right, merely that everyone is partly right. By using Integral Theory we can begin to see how this can be applied to the history and philosophy of chiropractic in revolutionary ways.

     The reader may still be wondering what this has to do with chiropractic? It is, after all, a modern day health discipline that should be shorn of all outmoded models and philosophies and completely embrace science! This is where the traveling library comes in. By placing D.D. Palmer’s traveling library at the forefront of our discussion, chiropractic can be viewed as a reaction to the Western Enlightenment, with its roots in philosophical ideas that stretch back to antiquity. By understanding how Palmer’s thought was a response to this philosophical tradition, we can better understand him and chiropractic. And it will take all of the resources mentioned thus far to get us there.

     The fourteen books and pamphlets that comprise Palmer’s traveling library illustrate his spiritualist and magnetic healing influences, and also place him significantly within one of America’s main religious cultures. The books themselves will be excerpted in the second part of this short volume. Not all of the books will be included and the quotes taken will be those that directly relate to Palmer’s moral and philosophical underpinnings. An emphasis will be on topics such as magnetic healing, theosophy, spiritualism, and self-development.

     The traveling library is as follows: J.W. Caldwell’s Full and Comprehensive Instructions: How to Mesmerize (1883/1885); Wilson’s How To Magnetize; E.D. Babbitt’s Vital Magnetism: The Life Fountain (1874); N.C.’s Psychometry and Thought-Transference with Practical Hints for Experiments (1887); C.A. DeGroot’s Hygeio-Therapeutic Institute and Magnetic Infir­mary; Knowlton’s Fruits of Philosophy (1877); E.H. Heywood’s Cupid’s Yokes (1879); Juliet Severance’s A Lecture on the Evo­lution of Life in Earth and Spirit Conditions (1882), A Lecture on Life and Health and How to Live a Century (1881), A Lecture on the Philosophy of Disease (1883); Might’s Aphorisms of Confucius (1871); Denton’s The Deluge in the Light (1882) and Be Thyself (1872).

     These authors can best be understood after we have created a context and map through which to understand them. The frame­work that we will use acknowledges four basic domains of truth, which are based on the Big Three discussed above. They are the validity of scientific empiricism, the sincerity of internal expe­rience, as well as the cultural context and social forces involved in shaping each author’s perspectives. Too often in the literature on chiropractic history and philosophy only one or two of these four domains is addressed. By including all four of these components, we can more accurately portray what Palmer meant by Science, Art, and Philosophy. With this map we can examine the traveling library and chiropractic from the widest possible pers­pective.

     I must make my apologies to the reader from the outset. Since my time and energies in sharing this information with you is limited, this book is short. Too short. I barely have the time in my busy life of being a husband and father, practicing chiropractic, teaching college, lecturing chiropractors, and research-ing, to write down these thoughts. My intention is to stir debate, offer reflection, and shake up those in the profession who think that they have all of the answers. In my experience, this is one of the major hindrances within the profession: the need to think that your answer is the only one worthy of serious discussion. Hopefully this short treatise and its attendant excerpts from Palmer’s readings will assist the profession to take wider perspectives and incorporate more worldviews. Future works will expand on the many strands herein. If I were to wait and offer one perfected and comprehensive text on the subject at hand, it would be ten years or more before I published a word. The chiropractic profession can hardly wait another day before it should start integrating anew.