What is a subluxation?
D.D. Palmer defined subluxation as follows: “A (sub)luxation of a joint, to a Chiropractor, means pressure on nerves, abnormal functions creating a lesion in some portion of the body, either in its action or makeup.
In other words, the vertebrae glide within one another, like trains on a track. Due to an accident or injury vertebrae can come off the track and get stuck.
What Does A Subluxation Do?
Subluxations obstruct the nervous system causing body malfunction (dis-ease). This results in lowered resistance to disease, pain, imbalance, and fatigue, meanwhile increasing illness throughout the entire body. They are also referred to as “silent killers”. If subluxations are not treated with chiropractic care there will be irreversible “wear and tear” (degeneration).
How Were Subluxations Discovered?
Dr. Palmer dedicated his career to the study of the nervous system and the natural treatments for dysfunction. Palmer examined his janitor who had become deaf 17 years prior after he felt something “give” in his back. Dr. Palmer felt misaligned vertebrae and adjusted the bones, performed the first chiropractic adjustment in 1895. Subsequently, the janitor said he could hear the noise coming from the streets. In other patients, Dr. Palmer found more of these abnormalities in their spines.
"Shortly after this relief from deafness, 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. Then I began to reason if two diseases so dissimilar as deafness and heart trouble, came from impingement, a pressure on the nerve, were not other diseases due to a similar cause?"
DR. DANIEL DAVID PALMER
In the same vein, Dr. DD Palmer practiced the ancient art of structure system alignment found in nearly every culture throughout history.