Daniel David Palmer had three children with his second wife, Louvenia. May, born in 1876, Jessie in 1880 and one son, Joshua Bartlett on September 14, 1882. Joshua, unhappy with his name, called himself Bartlett Joshua, or “Bart”, and finally B. J.
     As a young man in the river city of Davenport, he called himself a river rat and ran with other boys. He admired his father, but unfortunately that feeling was not reciprocated by D. D. His father seemed too busy and showed little affection for BJ., however, B.J wanted to be like him.
     B. J. was a precocious youngster. He was an avid reader of a wide range of subjects. He had studied art in Chicago, landscape work, painting and music. However, B.J.’s formal elementary school did not continue much beyond ninth grade. In September 1895, the mischievous youth and two of his friends, Bill Hickey and Bert Frahm released white mice in the classroom and the girls all climbed upon the desks and pulled their skirts up, and that’s the reason they did it. The prank resulted in expulsion from Davenport school. Bill Hickey and Bert Frahm’s fathers pleaded for their reinstatement, D. D. made no similar request.
     On the 18th. of the same month, D. D. adjusted Harvey Lillard, whom regained his hearing after three adjustments upon the 4th. thoracic vertebrae. B. J. at the age of 13, was present and watched his father adjust Mr. Lillard.
     B. J. became very interested and took up chiropractic, learning from his father in the first few years of the new century. B. J. claimed in later years that he was keenly interested in his father’s discovery, so much so that in order to better understand the new theory, he had retrieved scraps of paper from the wastebaskets, on which D. D. wrote the first drafts of his daily diary/journal entries. In 1897,at the age of 15 years, B. J. urged his father to begin a school and teach chiropractic, especially since his father’s near fatal railway accident in Clinton, Iowa.
       During those early years (1897-1902), while “Old Dad” was devising his new healing method, his son, B.J. was growing into a young man. In 1897 he went on the road. In 1899, it appears that B.J. joined a Prof. Herbert L. Flint, the hypnotist who had come to lecture in Davenport. He was Prof. Flint’s assistant. B.J. returned to Davenport in 1901. Considering the time B.J. was on the (road) stage with Flint, the experience may have produced a profound effect upon the young man. B.J. returned home as a 20 year old with the ability to assume control of his father’s business so successfully and the showmanship talents so much in evidence throughout his career.  B.J. also found good friends and a comfort level with the circus and performers. Circus people always received free chiropractic care at the Palmer Clinics in later years. He always used the circus tent for his Lyceum programs (festive homecoming events).  Another feature of B.J. Palmer’s unfolding personality , like his father, he would become an avid letter writer, voracious reader and focused on detail. The vast written record B.J. left behind suggests rather strongly that despite his limited formal schooling, he became a very well educated man, both in the ways of the world and in the literature of his day. It was an education derived from reading, from extensive travel, and from a curiosity about the world that soon prompted him to research the new healing art he came to dominate.
     B.J.’s education was, for the most part informal. Although he learned from his father and from many fascinating characters he encountered, his scholarship remained undisciplined. His education was remarkable for its breath. He sought methods of proving the chiropractic theories he already accepted.  In an interesting parallel to the complexity and paradoxical qualities of his father’s reasoning, B.J. the vitalist also functioned as a “reductionist”.  B.J. Palmer sought to simplify theory, knowledge and technique, sometimes to an extent that would earn his father’s ridicule.
     At the young age of 19 years, Bartlett Joshua returned to Davenport from Professor Flint’s itinerant vaudeville company to take up the study of chiropractic. As the school grew with students paying a tuition of $500.00, a member of the Scott County Medical Society, Heinrich Matthey, M.D., began harassing the Palmers and created a situation in which D.D. left Davenport and traveled to Pasadena, California, leaving B.J. at the age of 19 years picking up the bills and running the Palmer School. 
     B.J had taken classes from his father and graduated in a class of four students on January 6, 1902. Seven years after his expulsion from the Davenport High School the young man came back, now as a Doctor of Chiropractic and assistant in his father’s fourth floor infirmary in downtown Davenport. Still a minor and apparently concerned about his image among his friends and acquaintances in Davenport, he grew a beard to project a more mature appearance. That appearance lasted his lifetime.
     In 1902, D. D. before leaving for Pasadena, transferred the school and its belongings over to B.J. along with several overdue bills. With the financial assistance of Dr. Willard Carver’s brother, the new “adjuster-in-chief” of Palmer School not only took over the remnants of his father’s school, but bounced back with flying colors. B.J stuck to his father’s script but revised the method of advertising. New students started increasing and by 1905, the Palmers could number their graduates at 55, including those trained by D.D. in California.
     B.J.’s recruitment of new faculty, his successful advertising and expanded student body, and his ability to attract external capital and repay the debts of the school marked him as a successful businessman. When the father returned from California in 1904, the school he had founded was as much B. J.’s as his, and the two became partners for several years.
     In 1902, B. J. met Mabel Heath. Born June 5, 1881, in the rural village of Milan, Illinois, just 10 miles from Davenport, the future “Sweetheart of the PSC” was eldest of three children born to William L. Heath. B.J. first met Mabel at Augustana College, where B.J. was an “assistant organist. B.J. and Mabel married in Davenport on April 30, 1904.
     On October 7, 1905 Old Dad Chiro was indicted for practicing Medicine without a license.  On March 28, Palmer was sentenced to pay a fine of $350.00 or be incarcerated for 105 days or until the fine was paid. Believing the jail time would lessen the fine, D.D. refused to pay and was incarcerated in the Scott County jail. All Palmer school assets were turned over to Mabel Palmer, to protect them from any civil penalties.
     B. J. used his father’s incarceration to promote the cause of chiropractic. The April/May issue of The Chiropractor featured an imprisoned Old Dad Chiro on its cover with the caption “Martyr of His Science, Chiropractic”. A tremendous amount of publicity brought new students and the public became aware of the Palmers and chiropractic. D. D., after several weeks, was released after his fine was paid by his wife Mary from Palmer School partnership money.
     D. D. and B.J. decided to end their partnership as Old Dad Chiro wanted to leave for Oklahoma. For the sum of $2,196.79, B.J receive all the assets of the institution and on May 1, the Father of Chiropractic headed for Medford, Oklahoma.
     Now B.J. Palmer was squarely in charge of the Palmer School. He soon became the “Developer of Chiropractic” located at the “Chiropractic Fountain Head”.  In 1906, B.J. assumed full control of Palmer School and Infirmary of Chiropractic (PSIC), and (operated it) with gusto. Among his first actions, on May 21, 1907, was to officially change the name of the institution, which was still legally incorporated as the Palmer School of Magnetic Cure, to PSIC. In short order also a number of “green books” were issued by the PSIC. B. J.’s fascination with new technologies was quickly in evidence when December 1906, a Phonographic Department was established for the purpose of recording and distributing the lectures published in his books.
     He also developed a reputation for his “Illustrated Lectures” for professional and lay audiences, and another multi-media novelty involving “lantern slides” an early form of image projection. He promoted the osteological collection established by his father. By the autumn of 1906, the PSIC collection included 1,865 specimens and over the next decade the collection grew dramatically. By 1908, the school was in business of selling osteological specimens. The PSIC introduced its own brand of cigar its own brand of cigars, “The Chiropractor,” thereby reaching new populations.
     Taking cues from his friend, eccentric author and publisher Elbert Hubbard, B.J. established the Palmer Printery, which grew quickly and became an important component in his many promotional programs. By 1910 the PSIC claimed to have distributed two million “pieces of literature” the year before. B. J.’s genius in marketing was evident early on. His personal mottoes would reach the ears and catch the imaginations of hoards of followers, such as: “Early to bed and early to rise, work like hell and advertise,” and “He who bloweth not his own horn, for him shall no horn be blown.”
     Without a doubt, the most spectacular of B. J.’s business successes in his early years at the helm of the PSIC was the phenomenal growth in the student body. The school had grown from nothing in 1902 when D. D. left the enterprise to several dozen students in 1905. The enrollment grew by leaps and bounds: from perhaps as many as 75 students in 1906, to as many as 687 students in 1911. Estimates of the corresponding growth in patient volume in the student clinics was also fabulous, and reached an average of 350 patient-visits per day in 1910.
     This growth required a tripling of the campus size in 1910, and development of plans to erect an eight-story classroom building. Aided by the return of the “doughboys: following World War I, PSIC’s enrollment would show further magnificent growth into the 1920s.
     At the school’s homecoming in August 1906, B. J. joined a selected group of chiropractors and established the Universal Chiropractor’s Association. For a membership fee of $5.00 a year it guarantees to pay the expenses of a legal suit, in case they were indicted for practicing medicine, surgery, obstetrics or osteopathy.
     Several other chiropractic colleges were opening, especially in the mid-west, however, B.J. was still the leader in all areas of chiropractic. In 1910, B.J. brought the first x-ray device to the PSIC, and quickly made plans to share the knowledge gleaned from the new instrument with the field. Palmer would develop the new methodology to unanticipated depths. The first Palmer x-ray machine, a “Sheidel-Western,” was installed on the second floor of the building at 828 Brady Street.  B.J.’s explicit intention in developing “spinography” was to verify or deny palpation findings and to verify or deny proof of the existence of vertebral subluxations.
     By January 1911 the Spinograph Department had produced 2,000 x-rays of the spine. In 1911, Palmer hired a professional photographer, James Franklin McGinnis, to function as school photographer and spinograph instructor. B.J. and McGinnis collaborated in several other technological innovations and in 1918 organized the Chiropractors’ Moving Picture Organization. The films they created were used by a number of state societies to spread the word of chiropractic.       McGinnis and C.C. McAdams soon introduced the first elective coursework in chiropractic radiology at Palmer School. X-ray in chiropractic soon became a regular feature of the PSIC. The next few years the PSIC’s Spinograph Department grew substantially. Since Palmer School was the leading producer of chiropractors, this meant that all future generations of D.C.’s would be exposed to the new imaging procedures.
     As the leader in the chiropractic profession and Secretary of the largest membership organization (Universal Chiropractors Association, now the International Chiropractors Association), B.J. spent the next decade in legal struggles of the young profession. He and Attorney, Wisconsin State Senator Tom Morris, paved the legal ground for chiropractors in state after state. B.J. adopted the extravagant dress and hair style of Elbert Hubbard, contributed a sex appeal and “Spizzerinctum” (his own word for enthusiasm) that generated publicity and spurred loyal supporters to fill the courtrooms. When visiting towns to defend chiropractors, he rented lecture halls and let loose with his well-known oratorical style, making a case for chiropractic and the defendants in the courts of public opinion. B.J.’s style played well with the public. On the witness stand Palmer adopted an imperturbable demeanor, supplemented by his well-rehearsed descriptions of chiropractic principles. Case after case was won throughout the country.
     The spectacular growth of the chiropractic profession during the period of B.J. Palmer’s ascendancy (1913-1924) cannot be separated from the phenomenal expansion of his educational institution during the same time frame. The college, which had long since come to be known as the Palmer School of chiropractic (PSC), was legally renamed in 1921, and would be known as the PSC for the rest of B.J.’s life. The PSC had graduated 75% of all the chiropractors in the world. In the years immediately following World War I, when federal education support for veterans became available and the PSC enrollment approached 3,000 students, B.J. claimed the PSC was the largest vocational institution in the nation, probably the world.
     As the years passed, B.J. dealt with many problems, from chiropractic college rivals to the introduction of the Neurocalometer. One of his largest problems was maintaining the profession to “pure” chiropractic.
     B.J. was also a technophile. Born in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, he grew up in a society that saw new machines revolutionize the culture on a regular basis. Airplanes and cars and trucks and highways along with radio were being discovered and developed. B.J. was part of these trends, and as in other areas of his life, he would be more than a passive observer. Wireless telegraphy was a turn-of-the-century development. B.J.’s teenage son, Dave, was an early enthusiast of ham radio. In March 1922 B.J. purchased a radio transmitter in Rock Island, Illinois.  He established a radio broadcasting station, the second one to be licensed  in the United States and first west of the Mississippi River.  B.J. Palmer, a radio broadcasting pioneer, located the facility in a small studio on the fourth floor of the PSC Administration building. The Palmer communications enterprise was underway, and was destined to play a significant role in chiropractic. A regular schedule of broadcasts commenced in May or June of 1922. The call letters “WOC”, variously taken to stand for “Wonders of Chiropractic” or “World of Chiropractic” were in fact assigned arbitrarily by the “Department of Navigation, Radio Service,” a division of the U.S. Department of Commerce. The rooftops of the PSC campus were soon adorned with a distinctive halo of towers and wires which quickly became both a well known local landmark for the Tri-Cities area and a visual trademark of the Fountain Head. This brought 43,000 visitors to Station WOC in its first opening year. These guests were given guided tours of the station and the school, and were seen as potential recruits for the PSC student body.
     Ronald Reagan began his broadcast career at radio station WOC Davenport and sister station WHO Des Moines in 1932.
     B.J. spent his final years as the “Developer of Chiropractic,” and there was much to admire. There might well not be a chiropractic profession today had it not been for Palmer’s perseverance and sheer gumption. He had followed the principles he and his father had developed, fighting his entire life to preserve chiropractic as a precise science, straight and unadulterated.
     B.J. died while at his summer home in Sarasota, Florida in 1961. Daniel David Palmer, B.J.’s son, became the president of Palmer School and soon changed the name to Palmer College of Chiropractic in 1962.    
     It is said that once in a generation, “God produces a completely unique being.” B.J. didn’t conform, but he achieved international fame rising from a lonely beginning in a broken family. He had independently developed a philosophy that nothing was impossible. He worked hard on everything he did. He was a man among men. Through tedious long days and nights, he was able to climb the ladder of success. B.J. properly deserves the title of “The Developer of Chiropractic.” He developed the profession at a time when the whole structure of chiropractic was loosely knit. He placed his goals toward legal acceptance of chiropractic. He would enable chiropractic graduates to be licensed and qualified to practice. As the “Developer,”  he deserves the heartfelt thanks of every Doctor of Chiropractor and those people they serve.
      B.J. said his life began as a waif in the downtown Davenport district; sleeping many nights in an old piano box! Finally, he was asked to speak in Madison Square Garden. Quite a contrast. What other man has accomplished so much…..with such a lowly beginning? 

References:

Dave Palmer, D.C., Ph.C., The Palmers

B.J Palmer, D.C., Ph.C., Chiropractic Philosophy Science And Art

Dennis Peterson/Glenda Weise, Chiropractic An Illustrated History

Joseph C. Keating Jr., B.J. Of Davenport

Gary R. Street, D.C., Ph.C., F.I.C.A., F.P.A.C., L.C.P., D.Ph.C.S., D.D. Palmer’s Early Years-The Path To The Discovery Of Chiropractic