The first chiropractor was a Canadian who claimed to have learnt chiropractic from the ghost of a dead medical doctor. 

Daniel David Palmer or D.D. Palmer founded chiropractic. He was born in Ontario before emigrating to the United States, where he practised magnetic healing. 

Palmer was also a spiritualist who attended séances. During his conversations with the dead, Palmer claims to have made contact with the spirit of Dr Jim Atkinson. The deceased medical doctor, who died 50 years earlier, informed Palmer that 95% of all disease was due to “subluxations” (when one or more bones of the spine move out of position and interfere with the nervous flow). The other 5% of disease occurred when joints outside of the vertebral column were displaced. 

Palmer considered his knowledge from the afterlife as a kind of religion. In 1911, he wrote that chiropractic needed a ‘religious head’ and went on to name himself alongside Christ and Mohamed. 

Instead of calling himself the messiah or a prophet, he called himself a doctor. The use of this undeserved title got him thrown in jail.