The Body Itself: Anatomical Foundations of Chiropractic

The Body Itself: Anatomical Foundations of Chiropractic

A Contemporary Study of Mabel H. Palmer's Anatomy (1923)

"The body itself is, and always will be, the best book on Anatomy."

— Mabel H. Palmer, 1923

In 1923, Mabel Heath Palmer, Professor of Anatomy at the Palmer School of Chiropractic, published the fifth edition of her Anatomy. It trained generations of chiropractors. The book gave students the anatomy of Gray and Cunningham alongside the chiropractic ideas of the day: Innate Intelligence directing every function, the subluxation as interference, and the meric system linking spinal segments to organs.

This book reads Palmer's text closely, chapter by chapter, and compares it with a century of later anatomy and physiology. Much of her anatomy has held up. Some of her chiropractic claims have been confirmed, some reformed and some rejected, and this book says plainly which is which:

• Confirmed: her argument that the sympathetic system is continuous with the central nervous system, and her 1917 case for a heat-regulating centre in the brain, now known to be the hypothalamus.
• Reformed: the subluxation, now explained by inflammation and swelling around the nerve root rather than bone pressing on nerve; and the meric system, kept as a principle of segmental correspondence rather than a fixed one-organ-one-vertebra map.
• Rejected: her denial of spinal reflexes, the claim that subluxation causes every hernia, and the claim that adjustment restores sight.

The twenty chapters are grouped in three parts: The Framework, Circulation and the Viscera, and The Nervous System and the Senses.

Every chapter includes:

• Palmer's own argument, quoted from the 1923 text
• the contemporary understanding of the same structures
• a "From 1923 to Today" comparison table
• a hands-on section on surface anatomy and palpation, or examination
• clinical reasoning for the manual clinician, with red flags and referral criteria
• a case for discussion
• key points, review questions and further reading

The book is written for chiropractic, osteopathic and manual therapy students and practitioners, and for anyone interested in the history of chiropractic. It treats the body as a self-regulating whole, and the clinician's task as removing what interferes with that capacity. It is the third volume in PCC PRESS's Clinical Reasoning Series, after The Roots of Clinical Reasoning and A Little World Within.

Jiro Yamahata, BCSc., DOMP, is the founder and educational director of the PALMS School of Chiropractic in Osaka, Japan, and has taught chiropractic and manual medicine for about 25 years.