History

Integrated Health Care and Chiropractic

By Frank M. Painter|July 19, 2026|History|

Integrated Health Care and Chiropractic

SOURCE: Integrated Health Care and Chiropractic

I never imagined that, when I first started volunteer-working @ Chiro.Org back in 1996, that I would be here 30 years later, connecting-the-dots, to detail chiropractic’s progress. When I graduated Palmer in 1993, our Profession was self-considered as an ‘Alternative” to ‘Conventional Medicine’. I still think of it that way.

In 1993, few medical Journals would publish articles penned by a chiropractor. This was a hold-over from the insidious plot the AMA and related medical societies created in the 1960s (when I was only 12) to isolate and destroy the Profession of Chiropractic, as detailed in our Wilk, et. al. vs. the AMA, et. al. section.

So, there I was, at the age of 45 in my last 2 trimesters @ PCC, walking through the David D. Palmer Health Sciences Library, when I noticed the new copy of the New England Journal of Medicine. Although I don’t recall the particulars of what drew my attention, that issue contained the first unconventional (?) article by David M. Eisenberg, MD titled Unconventional Medicine in the United States [NEJM 1993 (Jan 28); 328 (4): 246–252].

I started reading it, and before long I was standing at the copy machine, so I could add it to my collection of favored articles. And like Alice, I found myself looking at the ‘rabbit hole’, and deciding to take the plunge. This article was also WHY I decided to name my practice Alternative Care Chiropractic.

After retiring as a ‘Field Doc’ in late 2020, I started remodeling the Chiro.Org website. My first assignment had been to flesh out our non-existent LINKS Section. At that time it was just a long collection of links TO materials on the web. It wasn’t long before I noticed that materials I had linked to had already disappeared (thanks to a link-checking software called Xenu’s Link Sleuth).

In the late 90s, as the WWW expanded exponentially, it was also very expensive to maintain a website, especially if you didn’t know HOW to write your own HTML (the language of the web) and had to hire a ‘webmaster’ to render your materials for you. So many budding websites that contained interesting materials disappeared every month, under that crushing expense.

So, whenever I found cool materials, I would LINK to them, BUT I would also make a copy of them, in the event that website evaporated. In fact, Chiro.Org is now the largest Archive of chiropractic materials on the web, outside of PubMed. That’s because we are archival in nature. It’s very rare that any materials are removed.

As I continued to collect materials, many of them seemed focused on Low Back Pain. Not the most interesting topic for a DC, but LBP is the most common complaint that presents to our offices, so our researchers were wise to focus on that topic, and Low Back Pain and Chiropractic became one of my first break-out pages in the LINKS. I refer to the pages in the LINKS as ‘topical’, and to date there are 86 of them, covering all the various topics I was interested in (from A-Z) from Acupuncture to Chiropractic and Workers’ Compensation.

If you check our Home Page it details all of our ‘active’ topical pages, which are regularly updated (as new materials are published) and the “Archival Sections” that are occasionally updated.

Those topical pages are the easiest way to find the materials that YOU may be interested in. The LINKS Section and our Chiropractic Research Section both display the spectrum of topics that might interest either a patient or a doctor, but all the other Active sections mentioned on our Home Page also contain numerous other mini-topical-sections that may also interest you.

I encourage you to snoop about the site, because after 31 years online, we have collected a spectrum of materials way beyond what you’ll find on any other chiropractic-related website.

The Canadian roots of Elon Musk’s chiropractor grandpa

By John Wiens DC|March 21, 2025|History|

Joshua Haldeman was just one of thousands of Saskatchewan farmers who lost their land in the drought of the Dirty ’30s.

While that trauma shaped the lives of everyone who went through it, the crisis affected Haldeman in an exceptional way — he never stopped raging at what he perceived were the causes of the Great Depression.

“He would remain leery of financial institutions and other bureaucracies throughout his life, a sentiment that would shape his political philosophy,” says a 1995 academic paper about Haldeman co-written by his son Scott.

Haldeman attended nine colleges and universities, including Moose Jaw College and Regina College, according to the academic paper written by his son Scott. Haldeman concluded his chiropractic training in 1926. Throughout his life, Haldeman was a leader in the chiropractic industry, taking board positions in provincial and national associations and pushing for new legislation.

But in the mid-1920s, instead of taking up chiropractic, he began farming.

The Passing of a Giant – Chester Wilk dies at 91

By John Wiens DC|April 23, 2022|History|

Shared from the World Federation of Chiropractic Facebook page

Dr Chester A. Wilk, the chiropractor famed for taking on the American Medical Association – and winning – passed away on Thursday, April, 21 at Advocate Lutheran Hospital, Park Ridge, Illinois.

The case of Wilk v AMA, an antitrust law suit, was a seminal moment in the profession’s history, at a time when chiropractors in the United States found themselves subjected to extreme prejudice and discrimination. The story of Chester Wilk’s epic battle is told in ‘Contain and Eliminate: the American Medical Association’s Conspiracy to Destroy Chiropractic’, written by Howard Wolinsky and published in 2021.

The persistence and fortitude of Wilk and his four co-plaintiffs, in the face of serious roadblocks to practicing as chiropractors, drove him to step up and take on the giant of healthcare. The David and Goliath story saw him consumed by his mission to expose the injustice and the covert Committee on Quackery that had been set up by the AMA to undermine and destroy chiropractic.

Starting in the 1970s, the legal battle continued for years, before a 1987 judgment by Judge Susan Getzendanner ruled that the AMA had illegally engaged in an unlawful conspiracy, a judgment subsequently upheld in 1990 in the Court of Appeals.

The impact of Wilk v AMA was huge. Doors that had previously been firmly shut opened up to allow interprofessional care and changes in the AMA’s ethical rules permitted referral by medical doctors to doctors of chiropractic.

We mourn the passing of Dr Wilk and recognize with gratitude the life of one of the legendary figures of the chiropractic profession.

Chiro.org has compiled a comprehensive page on the Wilk Anti-tust suit.

Elon Musk’s chiropractic connection

By John Wiens DC|March 14, 2021|History|

Source Regina Leader-Post

Dr. Scott Haldeman is a board certified Neurologist in active clinical practice in Santa Ana, California. He currently is a distinguished Professor at the University of California, the Chairman of the Research Council for the World Federation of Chiropractic and the Founder/President of World Spine Care.

Accomplished in his own right, he also happens to be the uncle of one of the worlds great innovators, Elon Musk. Read how the young Musk spent time on the Haldeman family farm in Saskatchewan. Both Scott’s father and his grandmother (Musk’s great-grandmother) were chiropractors. In fact, Almeda Haldeman became Canada’s first known chiropractor in the early 1900’s.

You can read the rest of the story here.

Information on the Haldeman’s and other chiropractic pioneers can be found in Dr J.C. Keating’s notes in our Chiropractic History section.

Elon Musk’s chiropractic connection

By John Wiens DC|May 16, 2017|History, Uncategorized|

Source Regina Leader-Post

Dr. Scott Haldeman is a board certified Neurologist in active clinical practice in Santa Ana, California. He currently is a distinguished Professor at the University of California, the Chairman of the Research Council for the World Federation of Chiropractic and the Founder/President of World Spine Care.

You can read the rest of the story here.

Information on the Haldeman’s and other chiropractic pioneers can be found in Dr J.C. Keating’s notes in our Chiropractic History section.

Assessing the Oracle at the Fountain Head: BJ Palmer and His Times, 1902-1961

By John Wiens DC|November 18, 2014|History|

Source Journal of the Association for the History of Chiropractic

This article is from Volume 7, No. 1 of the Journal of the Association for the History of Chiropractic, 1987. From the text of the article, “It may be an understatement to observe that while it is quickly apparent that the opinions, writings, influence and impact of B.J. Plamer have blanketed the history and evolution of chiropractic, few objective studies have explored the inner workings of its “Developer”.

The article contains some fascinating insights . It mentions that the only in-depth interview and study of the early years comes from the research of a New York lawyer by the name of Cyrus Lerner. Lerner was a well-respected attorney and at one time had been personal counsel to Joseph Kennedy, the father of JFK. The manuscript produced in 1952 was massive, some 780 pages in length and provides insights not only into Palmer but into the state of chiropractic through the first half of the 20th century.

You can read the original paper here.

Mr. Lerner’s report as reproduced by Joseph C. Keating, Jr., Ph.D. for the Association for the History of Chiropractic can be read here.

Dr Keating’s notes for his many articles on chiropractic history are archived here at chiro.org.

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