Oakley Smith's schism of 1908: the rise and decline of naprapathy

Abstract

The year 1908 through circumstance and perhaps inevitable progression of new healing concepts, proved to be one of historical moment for two of the first followers of Daniel David Palmer. Oakley Smith, who graduated under "Old Chiro" in 1899, and John F. A. Howard, who was in the Class of 1906, would find themselvles in Chicago, each heading new schools. Smith, a one-time Iowa medical student who had investigated Andrew Still's osteopathy in Kirksville, Missouri before going to Davenport, was to take another path. In the strict sense, it was not dissent but schism. For Smith, who would in time reject the Palmer concept of vertebral subluxation, it was to be a total departure as to the "doctrine of disease," and he was to announce his own concept, which was "the connective tissue doctrine."