Innate Intelligence

Living, usually buried, in us is an Innate Intelligence. If we could

open those flood gates and let Innate flow, we would be as good and
as great as it, itself. Living in all of us is our innate selves. Innate is
God in human beings. Innate is good in human beings. Innate is life
in human beings. Innate is health in human beings. Innate is sane in
human beings. Let Innate flow in and through us and we can
accomplish the great wonders.”
Chiropractic Philosophy Science and Art. Vol. XXXII, pg. 56 B.J.
Palmer…….  
What is Health? – by B.J.Palmer

“So what Chiropractic does, is that it simply “takes the handcuffs off
Nature”, as it were. By finding the particular vertebra that had
shifted and restoring it to its natural position, the adjustment thus
releases the natural flow of nerve impulse. When the maze of
nerves, or Nature’s communication system, supplies the body with
the energy it needs for well being, you have health.” BJ Palmer
 
BJ Letter to Dr. Oakley

Dear Friend Oakley,

Father received word from Dr. Harriman this a.m. saying he could come out any day this week except
Monday and he would show him around the buildings…quite fortunate isn’t he.

Business has been very slow here for the last month and father is getting very much discouraged so
much so that mama has almost persuaded him to sell out here, take his collection of heads, go to
Washington, D.C. and start up a 25 cent museum.

How ridiculous when there are zoos of live animals that people can see free of charge!
Chicago,Philadelphia,New Yorkare the same way. I think it is a very foolish piece of Business!

The facts of the case are that mama has been living high on her fine dresses, “that will make the
President look at her etc. etc.” that & the hired help which all costs a pile of money & makes expenses
heavy. So he says he is losing $200 monthly.

But he says “I have lived since I was 26 with 5 women & this is the best of them all and if I see they want
to boss it I just let them do it.” He would do it even if they run him & his business in the ground.

Now if you don’t think he is doing the right thing for suffering humanity in quitting the ranks of Chiro to be
a museum leader, tell him so when he comes out because he will be sure to broach the subject.

It was said that if he got a buyer he would sell his stuff here today & go east tomorrow. Might be good
opening for you Oakley.

If you wish to write to me do so it will be strictly between you and I or public just as you want. Because I
would like to know what you think of this outrage.

You can send to Gen’l Delivery or house as you please but G.D. would be safer. Yours truly,

Bart Palmer
  

Story of B.J. Palmer

PROLOGUE to the book “The Bigness of the Fellow Within”   By HERBERT C. HENDER, D.C.,Dean, The
Palmer School of Chiropractic BEFORE STUDYING the preface and The Bigness of the Fellow Within
which follows, it is proper you should know three men—the father of him who writes this prologue, the
writer of the prologue, and the man about whom he writes in the preface. All this should be read as
preliminary to the body of the book. To know me and my background is to know how well I know the one
about whom I write. To know B.J. as I know him, is to better appreciate what he writes in his article. My
father, A. B. Hender, M.D., D.C., was a close, intimate and personal friend of D. D. Palmer, in his early
struggling years, having associated with him at the time of his discovery of Chiropractic.When D. D.
Palmer left Davenport, my father linked interests with the son about whom I write. My father became an
instructor in The Palmer School of Chiropractic until his death—48 years of service to Chiropractic. He
was Dean when he passed away in 1943. I was born “to the faith.” I grew, surrounded with Chiropractic
atmosphere; I breathed it, lived it, heard it talked about, pro and con, on all sides at all times. I grew up
saturated with discussions of the trials, troubles, and tribulations of D. D. Palmer’s son, B.J. For twenty-
seven rich and happy years, I’ve worked at B.J.’s side—first, as a student in his school: later as a
member of his faculty family; finally, now, as Dean of his beloved P.S.C. I am therefore competent to
discuss and tell about him and say what I please. As a member of his official family, I’ve held almost daily
conferences with him. I’ve participated in numberless faculty and staff meetings with him. Hours beyond
number, I’ve listened to him lecture, dictate, or make recordings. And, no matter how often all this has
been, he has always held my devout attention. I’ve sat with him in fishing boats, on the side of trailers
when we traveled on vacations. His every waking moment was always thinking, studying, reading, or
discussing multitudinous phases of our Chiropractic, radio, or what-have-you problems—too many times
giving up restful trips to stay and work. He almost always carries his faithful Corona with him. When in a
train bedroom or drawing room, out comes the note pad, jotting down notes. Later,out comes his
typewriter, when he fills in the notes.When he begins to look out a window or grows quiet, he wants to be
let alone until he has studied what he is going to say and write. I have known him to write and rewrite a
particular sentence or paragraph as many as twenty times, until it was whipped into language which
expressed his idea. I have heard him say: “Give us thirty days and we’ll write a book. Give us three
months, and we’ll write a paragraph. Give us a year, and we’ll write an epigram. “Once finished, he would
read it to me or some other critic, get reactions to see if we grasped what he was trying to say. If we did,
he was finished. If we did not, he started over again. I once asked B.J. how he wrote his lectures. His
answer was characteristic. “We don’t write them, we build them.”
I asked him to describe the process from time he began a lecture until finished, thinking that might be of
interest and help others to duplicate his method. Here is his description:“We deliberate and mentally
carve out our fundamental theme around which we desire to build the talk. It might be a new thought, or it
could be a symposium of preceding ideas. We then mentally test it for logic and reason to see if it will
stand up under the test of time. If it does, we goahead. If it does not, we whip it until it does. Having given
an idea birth, we then begin to shape our approach. Conception of a theme is the hardest part we have to
go through.” (Let me here interject a description of his typewriter which, like most other things this man
works with, is radically different. Years ago, he became disgusted with constantly taking out and putting in
ordinary sheets of paper, because it broke his continuity of thought when writing. He suggested to the
Remington Company that they build him a special typewriter with a continuous roll of paper five hundred
feet long, on a spool on top, automatically fed. He also asked for an electric automatic shift of the
carriage, by pressing one key on the keyboard which, at the same time, would shift the paper so he could
write by the yard on paper eighteen inches wide. I have seen a continuous writing twelve feet long,
eighteen inches wide, single spaced, when he was writing. To his knowledge, this was the first
electrically-operated typewriter built, and that was at least twenty years ago. He uses the “hunt and peck”
system of two fingers and can type as fast or faster than many stenographers using ten fingers. This
unusual and different typewriter is an object of curiosity to visitors and is usually demonstrated by the
guide who conducts the daily noon tours through The B. J. Palmer Chiropractic Clinic.)“We then write
whatever comes, as it comes, be it good or bad. We keep writing as long as thoughts flow, and they
always flow without effort. We may knock out some, much, or all of it later. Much of this may be out of
sequence. We keep on until the present line of thinking is exhausted. Then we let it simmer and settle for
an hour, hours, days, or weeks. Usually, when building a lecture, it is more or less steadily on our minds,
and we are constantly harassed by Innate to keep on keeping on whipping it into shape. Usually, in a few
days or a week or two, it is finished for the time being.“Soon a new line of thinking may begin to flow and
away goes the typewriter again. We frequently rewrite our copy the second or third time before we get it
to say exactly what we mean, before turning it over to our lecture secretary. When the subject has
seemingly been completed, we turn it over to the secretary who types it on regular size sheets, double
spaced, each paragraph on aseparate sheet, each page numbered separately. We then take these and
rearrange them for sequence of thought. Page 1 may be moved to page 6; or page 9 may be page 1, etc.
“We continue the study of our subject from time to time, adding copy, marking it ‘Insert 1,page?’   Our
secretary then rewrites those pages with inserts. We then go over the copy once more, transpose one
sentence from here to there, constantly briefing, cutting out superfluous words or duplicate thoughts,
possibly eliminating entire sentences or paragraphs foreign to the central theme. “From time to time,
during intervals between working on a certain lecture, we might be found reading, or checking on gold
fish in pools of Clinic Gardens or aquaria in Clinic, or doing any one of a hundred other things here, there,
or everywhere, during which one or a series of new ideas may flash. We hesitate, then and there, and
make notes. This is kept up for days or weeks, at times getting so many inserts that it looks like a crazy-
quilt patch job. We then have the lecture completely rewritten, inserting at proper places all late inserts;
then by reading it entire we can see how it sounds or listens. Additional inserts continue until we feel the
subject has been fully covered.We then lay it away to settle.“When it is finished, we have the secretary
copy it once more, double-spaced, on loose leaf form for filing in one of the 150 volumes of lecture
outlines, each of which is numbered. This lecture, under its title, is indexed in the Index Volume for quick
selection at any time. Every lecturewe have ever given, from away back when, is builded around an
outline and is filed as mentioned for future reference. This makes it possible to repeat most any lecture on
most every subject on short notice Instead of beginning a new outline, we have one ready built. “Even
then, days or weeks later, a new train of contributory thought may come. When it does, we write them in
notes, be it at night in bed or at some other activity, then fill them in on typewriter, revise and rewrite until
they represent new thoughts, rewriting pages into which they fit or overlap. If these inserts are of
sufficient number to justify, we have all pages of the lecture outline renumbered so they follow each other.
This prevents any getting out of order or misplaced. Often this process of renumbering pages may be
done three or four times.“Keeping in mind the various topics we have lectured on and have outlines for,
we often goback to one of years ago and add something. The listener hears in one hour the labor of
possiblyhundreds of hours.“Often the comment has been made, ‘What a brilliant man. His talks are
marvelous. I could listen to him all day.’ Little does the listener realize that the talk he listens to is not the
product of the hour during its deliverance, it is the product of weeks, months, years in advance, even
though he hears it all within one hour. “Every time a lecture is delivered, we see a part or parts which can
be strengthened, others may be deleted. No lecture is ever finished. One talk (Selling Yourself ) has been
delivered more than 5,000 times over the world before all kinds of audiences, cutting and fitting it to suit.
It isn’t finished yet!
“We have funeral orations, sermons from pulpits of churches. We have conducted schools on radio,
Chiropractic, legislation, salesmanship, caves, migrations of races, national andinternational conventions
in many foreign countries. In fact, the list is endless.“Criticism has been directed to the voluminousness of
our talks. In writing, we endeavor to present a complete presentation, leaving no loop-holes. By
presenting every fact, it cannot successfully be attacked.“Altogether, one lecture may represent scores or
hundreds of hours from time of conception to laying it away to rest. That’s the process we use in building
a lecture.” I’ve traveled planes, ships and sleepers with him, to and from endless conventions of various
kinds when he was to speak. I’ve read, corrected proof, or discussed most every book,magazine article,
or lecture to come from his prolific and versatile mind. He has written on most every subject one can
conceive. He has 150 big volumes of lecture outlines—a lifetime’s work if nothing else were ever done—
yet it was but one item amongst many in his life. He has written and printed an entire library and
thousands of booklets and pamphlets. One wonders where he gets time for it all. He asks for criticism. He
wants truth, and I always give it. He is not adverse to people who disagree with him. But he wants those
differences to be based on logic and reason and to be sincere. I know the reasons “why he does what he
does in the way he does it.
B.J. is an early riser. Outside of the night shift around The P.S.C., he is always the first on the job. He has
his breakfast at 6:00 A.M., lunch at 10:30, dinner at 4:30 P.M. And he goes to bed at 9:00P.M.,
regardless. If there is company at home, he will often say, “Let’s go to bed, our company wants to go
home. He gets his first mail at 6:00 A.M., and it is answered at once. He then usually makes the rounds of
inspection of his buildings, checking, seeing if all is right. He makes notes on what needs to be corrected
or changed. As soon as the department head arrives, he calls him and reports what is to be done, and
how. He knows his buildings, their equipment, their uses, intimately; and astounds his people with his
understanding of what it is, what it does, and how. It has been frequently said:“If everything is running
according to Hoyle, he is never around or makes comment; but let anything go wrong, he is on the job
instantly.” He is called “Eagle Eye” by many because he sees details which frequently escape the eyes of
the head of the department. I’ve seen this man completely reverse himself several times, evolutionize and
revolutionize his processes of thinking, speaking, writing, and printing, as well as teaching, as he has
climbed in the development of himself. Often this has been costly in friends and finances. He is always
fearless, never afraid of consequences in so doing. He has often said, “The only excuse for any person to
live is the development of self.” I have seen him change from a dogmatist, teaching a dogma in a
dogmatic manner, in the days when such was necessary, to that of a scientist, teaching a science in a
scientific manner. Such changes were brought about by the logic and reason of his indefatigable
researches for better ways of doing better things, to accomplish more, with less effort, to save time, that
he might take worse cases and get them well quicker at cheaper cost to patient.
I’ve heard this man cussed and discussed, damned and praised, by friends and enemies. Hehas often
said, “We have no lukewarm friends. They are either red-hot for us or ice-cold against us, depending
upon whether or not they know what we are trying to accomplish. His mind does not deal with fol-de-rols
or knick-knacks, fringes or useless details. He has a very analytical mind, what he calls “straight-line-
thinking.” I know his faults—and he has them—as well as his virtues. He is a very human being, common,
easy to approach if you have something worth while to say. He is sensitive to unjust, untrue, injustices.
He does not deliberately hurt anyone, although often his pungent and terse answers are so construed. He
will quickly brush aside anybody who pesters him with nonsense.
B.J. is kind, thoughtful, considerate, never deliberately hurting feelings, trying to avoid doing so. He is
constructive, building for tomorrow. His early and comparatively recent life has been one of battling his
home town, many of his own profession, legislatures, to save his heritage. He has had to fight for the
preservation, development, and defense of Chiropractic to preserve it in its purity for posterity; often
against some in his profession who would drag Chiropractic in the mud for selfish purposes of mercenary
greed, regardless of how it ruined Chiropractic and was of no value in getting sick people well. All this has
made him callused, tough, bitter towards many and much. He has been deceived so often by so many
that he places trust in few. In last ten years, much of this has changed. Being elastic and plastic, he has
mellowed, softened, forgiven many ofthe heartaches and sufferings forced upon him. His work is now
coming into its own. The City of Davenport is now his friend. The Chiropractic profession is divided into
two camps—those strongly for, and those bitterly against. He ties fast to the group for, and now ignores
the group against. Many students of The P.S.C., upon graduating, tell him how they are going to carry on
his principles and practices. His answer is born of his struggles. “Tell me that ten years from now, after
you have been tried and not found wanting, and I’ll believe you. It has been vicariously bruited around by
some near and dear to B.J., and through them to others not so close, and the talk has been kicked about
like a football, that he is in business and,being in business, his opinions and actions are unduly influenced
by his business advisors of the necessity of yielding to financial income rather than meeting the ends of
scientific progress and thedevelopment of his profession. As one writer put it:“Being the head of a
business, you are more or less the victim of your customer’s wants and desires if you wish to keep his
business. You cannot promote a radical idea any more because it will affect your business. Those who
receive the salaries who run the business and who advise you in such matters must always be cautious
to protect the business and their salaries. After reading this preface and studying the ways and means
used by this man and what he has gone through, the reader must come to the unalterable conclusion that
nothing and nobody has stopped or can stop B.J. from doing what he interprets as the right thing to do,
when the right time comes to do it. That has been his history and that is still his straight-line thinking and
acting. He has an organization and as such is an organization man. He is not a one-man rule or ruin
director of his enterprises. No organization can long run without successful team work. He counsels with
his counselors, he listens to their suggestions and weighs them carefully; but when he feels he is right
and the time has arrived for any new innovation, he is fearless in taking the step regardless of how it
effects his income. He long ago realized that permanent growth comes from growth that is permanent
and that always follows the pioneer who moves into newer and better fields who keeps up with progress.
“Go West young man and grow up with the country” is still true in fields ofphilosophies, sciences,
and  arts.He  knows no expediency nor does he appease anybody on a step forward and upward when
necessary. When his Innate directs him an issue is right, he moves regardless of any and all educated
sophistries to the contrary. I always end up saying, “If you knew this man as I do, you would be the friend
to him that I am.”
Herbert C. Hender, D.C  Dean of the Palmer School of Chiropractic 
You are before you are

B.J. Palmer was a great businessman, promoter of Chiropractic, a world class salesman,
a riveting speaker, but he didn’t become those things, he was those things and once he had discovered
his purpose to help as many people as possible reach an optimum state of health, he had an outlet for all
these innate abilities.
Purpose is the driving force that allows you to overcome your barriers to promoting yourself and your
practice. To release these abilities you have to discover the purpose you formulated as a young man or
woman and it is often a general statement that you want to help others or to be a doctor or to heal those
around you. I’ve seen this many times when working with clients. Their purpose was there before the
talents appeared. I can give you an example of my two year old granddaughter. She’s going to be an
entertainer, or public speaker or teacher and possibly all those things rolled up into one. Last week she
got up on a stage, looked for the mic and when one wasn’t there she improvised with a mic cable and just
started to sing and to perform. You can watch her natural talent on my FaceBook page. She didn’t
hesitate and she knew what she was doing.

The only way she would lose this talent is if her family members or teachers told her she had to be quiet,
well behaved, and don’t be outspoken. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen this stop a chiropractor or
healthcare professional who had all the talent in the world, but it was unexpressed. Imagine telling your
child never to speak to strangers. Now as an adult he or she would have to talk to strangers in order to
introduce new patients to Chiropractic. Well as long as that person held onto the idea of “Never speaking
to strangers,” he or she would be a failure.

So have a look and see if you have any self imposed barriers that are limiting your expansion and
success. Contact me and I will help you if you are having any difficulty in this area.

Paul Turnbull
 
What Chiropractic Does!

So what Chiropractic does, is that it simply “takes the handcuffs off Nature”, as it were. By finding the
particular vertebra that had shifted and restoring it to its natural position, the adjustment thus releases the
natural flow of nerve impulse. When the maze of nerves, or Nature’s communication system, supplies the
body with the energy it needs for well being, you have health.
The office of chiropractic is to assist Nature where Nature cannot assist itself. This is done either by
removing hindrances to transmission of energy, or restoring the channel to its original and normal
condition. This restoration is achieved by chiropractic adjustments.

Book: Up From Below the Bottom by B.J. Palmer

 
Building the Palmer Enterprises

The spectacular growth of chiropractic profession during B.J. Palmer’s ascendancy (1913-1924) is
inseparable from the concurrent expansion of the Palmer School of Chiropractic (PSC) and B.J.’s many
related businesses. In that era and for decades to come, Palmer, the “Developer,” accurately proclaimed
that his “Fountain Head,” the PSC, had graduated 75% of all the chiropractors in the world. In the years
immediately following World War I, when federal educational support for veterans became available and
the PSC enrollment approached 3,000 students, B.J. truthfully claimed that his was the largest vocational
institutional in the nation, probably in the world. Given its preeminence among chiropractic schools and
B.J.’s predilection for extraordinary claims, Palmer and his Fountain Head became a major target for
medical critics (Brennan, 1983).
Palmer delighted in responding to the criticisms from political medicine. He taunted them, and turned the
would-be negative publicity they heaped upon him to his advantage. He had built his “science” with
printer’s ink, he declared, and would buy it by the train load. The “P.T. Barnum of Science” knew few
limits in his capacity to spread the gospel of chiropractic and the legend of the PSC. When the Illinois
Medical Journal branded him “the most dangerous man in Iowa OUT of a prison cell” and as an “insane…
paranoiac, a man whose irresponsibility is criminal,” B.J. reveled in his supposed ignominy and
responded with posters depicting himself in front of prison gates (Gromala, 1984).
In this period also, B.J. completed perhaps the most scholarly work of his career, An Invisible
Government,which offered a scathing indictment of organized medicine and its efforts to monopolize
health care. “Maliciousness based on prejudice,” he suggested, was at the heart of the medical trust
(Palmer, 1917a, p. 16).
B.J. learned the craft of advertising from mentors such as his father and Elbert Hubbard. The latter was a
writer, publisher, lecturer, craftsman and highly successful businessman from upstate New York. Hubbard
was also the son of a well-regarded physician who had vigorously promoted the “germ theory” in the latter
part of the nineteenth century (Lerner, 1954, pp. 667-76). Elbert Hubbard had dropped out of Harvard
University and become a popular “free thinker.” His literary talents brought him to national prominence,
and he promoted an anti-intellectual intellectualism that caught B.J.’s fancy. “All colleges are worthless
societies; they develop indolence, conceit and theoretical nonsense,” declared the iconoclastic Hubbard
(Lerner, 1954, p. 668). His several years as a writer for Arena Magazine of Boston brought him in contact
with the drugless healing movement and with turn-of-the-century opposition to the spread of medical
practice laws.
Hubbard established his Roycroft printing plant and furniture factory in East Aurora, New York and
marketed his products nationwide. He adopted attention-grabbing attire, catchy epigrams and the
“Simplified Spelling” method then promoted by Harvard University. His eccentricity caught the public’s
eye, and his publishing empire flourished, despite or perhaps because of the criticism it attracted from the
establishment. His lecture tours brought him to Davenport, Iowa in 1906, where he spoke at the Burton
Opera House. We may speculate about whether B.J. was in attendance on that occasion. In any case, in
1908 Hubbard sought out B.J. and the PSC, which were just beginning to gain a national reputation.
Hubbard was impressed with the young doctor, and the two became fast friends. B.J. adopted Hubbard’s
style of dress (loose-fitting blouses and large, flowing ties), long hair, publishing style, use of “reformed
spelling” and mode of business practice (Gromala, 1984). The two iconoclasts frequently visited one
another at their respective headquarters, and B.J. named one of the rooms in his mansion after the East
Aurora guru (Palmer, c1977, p. 97).

Hubbard’s death, when a German submarine torpedoed the luxury liner Lusitania in 1915, was a deeply
felt loss for Palmer. But the Developer soon surpassed his teachers. The growth of the Palmer Printery,
an extension of the PSC, was phenomenal. B.J. quickly cornered a large share of the market for
chiropractic advertising materials. In 1916 or 1917 he purchased the patient newsletter established by his
prot g and former spinographer, James F. McGinnis, DC, B.J. turned the advertiser into a very successful
promotional vehicle,The Chiropractic Educator, a four-page monthly patient newsletter. The Educator was
filled with testimonials for the young healing art, and surely angered medical orthodoxy. It was an
example of B.J.’s unabashed and unreserved commitment to marketing technology and to teaching his
fellow chiropractors to learn and use his methods:
ADVERTISE

“WHEN things ain’t going right with you, and you can’t make them gee; – when business matters look real
blue, and you fear bankruptcy; – when cobwebs gather on your stock and customers are rare; – when all
your assets are in hock, don’t cuss and tear your hair; – just listen to our good advice and take it if you’re
wise; – take a course at The P.S.C. and then go advertise, – and advertise from morn to night; don’t
overlook a day, – and soon you’ll see the world go bright, and things will come your way; – invest in good
publicity, and fortune you will greet, – and in a little while you’ll be ‘way up on Easy street (Palmer,
1916c).”

In the opinion of the American Medical Association (AMA), advertising was a serious professional sin. The
ethical standards of the AMA forbade its members to advertise, other than to list their names, addresses
and phone numbers. But B.J. had no such scruples, and decried political medicine’s efforts to prevent
non-AMA members (most especially chiropractors) from promoting their practices. Over and over again
he reminded his readers that “It pays to advertise!” Health care, he suggested, was a commodity, and
should be marketed and sold just like any other consumer item or service. Advertising was as American
as apple pie, and AMA et al. had no right to interfere.

Among the most important of his many publishing ventures was the so-called “Palmer Weekly,” B.J.’s
personal newsletter, the Fountain Head News (FHN). Established circa 1912, the FHN was significant not
for its financial rewards to the Developer (FHN was initially distributed free), but because it connected him
to the field, and they to him. The PSC’s monthly journal, The Chiropractor, increasingly functioned as the
official periodical of the Universal Chiropractors’ Association (UCA), and featured an ever greater number
of articles written by the protective society’s membership. B.J. felt the need for his own, more intimate
professional forum.
The FHN offered a smorgasbord of content. Here were published Palmer’s numerous editorials on every
topic under the sun (whether of chiropractic relevance or not), news and photos of the burgeoning PSC
campus and facilities, reviews of legal defenses and licensing campaigns, notices of state and national
professional events, advertisements for various products from the expanding Palmer enterprises, clinical
vignettes, prose and poetry, cartoons, and an endless stream of letters to B.J. The Developer used the
FHN to tell the tales of his various travels around the country, and reprinted newspaper accounts of his
lecture tours. When he ventured by train in 1916 to San Francisco to embark on his first sea-going
voyage (to Hawaii), groups of chiropractors, advised of his itinerary by the FHN, greeted B.J. and Mabel
at each train stop along the way (Palmer, 1916b). Many columns were devoted to condemnation of
vivisection and compulsory vaccination; sometimes whole issues reviewed medical handling of various
epidemics. B.J. brought considerable humor to these topics; a piece of prose authored by Martha Hart
(Hart, 1918) was typical:
The correspondence reprinted in the pages of the FHN is of special historical importance. It mattered not
whether the writer expressed pro- or anti-Palmer sentiments: B.J. published it all the same. (Of course, he
always got the last word in his own newsletter.) Owing to his eagerness to share both the positive and the
negative feedback he received with the field, the FHN became a rich weekly chronicle of current events in
the profession. Here the Developer held court, exhorted and cavorted, praised his supporters,
reprimanded his opponents and detractors, and filled his readers with “spizzerinctum.” The “PSC boys,”
as he called his alumni, could stay in close touch with their leader and their alma mater, and felt some
sense of security amidst the ever growing persecution from organized medicine, because B.J. was
obviously on top of whatever was happening. The FHN let its readers know that the Developer was going
to defend them and save them, especially if they were PSC boys and/or UCA members.

The FHN employed the new system for marking the years that B.J. devised, for example, “A.C. 28” for
1922. First introduced with the June 24, 1916 issue of the FHN (Volume 5, Number 19), the “A.C.” dating
of the newsletter was a parody of Christians’ “Anno Domino,” and marked time from 18 September 1895,
the supposed date of the first adjustment. It was characteristically B.J., and reminded his audience with
every issue that chiropractic was as significant as religion, and that its date of discovery was at least as
important as the birth of the Nazarene. And no one should forget who bore the cross for chiropractic.

The FHN was but one component in B.J.’s ever growing publishing empire. The PSC also produced The
P.S.C. Clinical Journal, The Chiropractor, and a wide range of “disease tracts” and wall charts (Palmer,
1917b), and, of course, the well known series of volumes referred to as the “green books” (Wiese &
Lykins, 1986). Palmer showed no sense of exclusivity or proprietorship about advertising ideas. He
welcomed innovation from his “boys” in the field, and shared novel tactics with his FHN readers. He was
particularly partial to the “free clinic idea,” wherein chiropractors offered their services gratis to the
indigent or to children or to uniformed servicemen and veterans. Free clinical services had been used to
good effect in the early efforts to attract the attention of legislators to the new discipline, and were well
received by the disabled soldiers of the world war. Palmer was happy to collaborate on most any project
which raised the visibility of the profession.
“Palmergrams” (Palmer, 1949, pp. 225-7; Wills, 1987, pp. 102-3) or “travelgrams” (An, 1919; Ashworth,
1920; No, 1919; Palmer, 1923) may be seen as an extension of the free clinic promotions. A Palmergram
was a certificate issued by B.J. which guaranteed chiropractic care, at no charge to the patient, and
reimbursement to any chiropractor who accepted the case. Circus workers were frequent recipients. The
Developer’s enthusiastic alumni were usually more than happy to acknowledge the publicity that Palmer
had brought to them, and provided service gratis. B.J. let it be known that any doctor who objected to
providing the chiropractic care without compensation could send the bill to him, and Palmer would pay.
Anyone who sent in such a bill, or any chiropractor who refused to provide care, could expect to hear
about it in the FHN.

by Joseph Keating Jr.,PhD