Is chiropractic based on neurology, anatomy and physiology?
No. It was based on a misunderstanding of those very disciplines. Palmer didn’t understand the germ theory of disease and he didn’t have the advantage of x-rays. He thought bones were actually out of place and thought he was putting them back: x-rays eventually showed this to be false. He thought the spinal nerves controlled every function of the body: he didn’t know about hormones, and he presumed connections that anatomy has never demonstrated. He thought of nerve impulses as flowing like water through a hose, and thought pinching a nerve would impair nerve conduction downstream rather than just at the point of constriction. He got almost all the basics wrong. Chiropractic was finally forced to admit that the BOOP (bone out of place) theory was wrong. In 1996 the Association of Chiropractic Colleges redefined the subluxation as “…a complex of functional and/or structural and or pathological articular changes that compromise neural integrity and may influence organ system and general
