Founders of Chiropractic were vitalistic philosophers who understood that there is order in the universe, life is created, maintained and destroyed according to natural law, and that life is health. In the words of B.J. Palmer is know as the developer of Chiropractic:
Today, BABIES ARE CONCEIVED, developed, given birth, live, and die according to law––natural law, the law that has been here, is coming in will be.
At this junction, what is law?
Law is that which is fixed, stable, everlasting, eternal.
If law is violated itself just once, it would cease to be a law.
If law could violate itself once, it could do so million times.
And, the more violated violated itself, the less law it would be.
Law does not violate itself to please the caprices of man.
Law is too big to change its pattern to please… man.
Scientists TELL US that in “nature” there are two forces contending against each other, and that things are as they are because of action and reaction of these two forces.
These are called the centrifugal (or inside), and the centripetal (or outside), known in physics as attraction and repulsion.
These two forces work on human beings as they work on everything else.
In chiropractic, they are known as innate intelligence (centrifugal) and environment (centripetal).
Nerves are named accordingly –- efferent and afferent –- which names designate their function of carrying mental impulses from Innate Intelligence to the periphery, or tissue cell (efferent), and vibrations from the tissue cell (periphery) to Innate Intelligence (afferent).
For thousands of years professionals that minister to the sick disregarded the centrifugal or inside force (Innate Intelligence), and searched the heavens and earth in a vain attempt to externally find the cause of disease.
Even now, we find a vast and learned army engaged in draining swamps, killing mosquitoes, prescribing diets, discovering germs and establishing hygienic conditions under which those in whom the flame of life burns feebly may continue longer upon the earth.
To contend that these investigations have found nothing of value to mankind is to betray ignorance and to show a total disregard for probable facts as to make ourselves ridiculous.
Fire burns, cold freezes, water drowns, alcohol intoxicates, poison kills, etc., and the most perfectly aligned spine in the world, with 100% of Innate Intelligence on the job, with a perfectly normal range of adaptability, will not prevent these excess outside conditions from producing death, discomfort, or loss of ease—at this stage of the development of the race, at least.
When these facts are admitted in environmental conditions, and each is traced to its logical conclusion, there remains the overwhelming mass of conditions of dis-ease that effect mankind, which are not reconciled to the external environmental theory of the cause of dis-ease.
A hundred thousand people drink water from the same stream for a year, and during that year forty become sick with what is diagnosed as typhoid fever.
Give the why of this from the standpoint of the water—or the germs in the water—being the cause.
Reverse the statistics and say that of a hundred thousand who drank the water, only forty remained alive.
Reason and logic point to the conclusion that in both instances there is an unknown factor, and that the unknown factor in the first instance is the cause of forty cases of typhoid fever, and in the second instance is the cause of forty survivors.
Living under the same environmental conditions, one member of the family has heart trouble, another bronchial, a third liver, and a fourth stomach trouble; while a fifth may suffer from nervousness, six from sciatica, etc.
Like causes produce like results. If this be true, if this be natural, how can one who affirms that the cause of disease lives in environment reconcile the facts to that theory?
It is self-evident there is some factor which is not environmental, that accounts for different results.
Chiropractic teaches this unknown factor is found within, and that the resistance, or the susceptibility, of the individual must be measured in terms of centrifugal force, i.e., vitality or mental impulse
While other professions are concerned with changing environment to suit the weakened body, Chiropractic is concerned with strengthening the body to “suit” the environment.
This is an explanation of the fundamental difference in theory, art, and practice between Chiropractic and the other professions, and an explanation of why chiropractic succeeds were other methods fail.
1955. B.J. Palmer, Chiropractic Philosophy, Science and Art, Volume XXXII, The P.S.C Press, Davenport, Iowa.