140 Fun Facts About Chiropractic

Chiropractic's older rival, osteopathy, was founded by which frontier physician?

Andrew Taylor Still turned against the medicine of his day after losing three of his children in an epidemic; he set out osteopathy's principles in 1874 and opened its first school at Kirksville in 1892.

In which Iowa city was chiropractic founded?

Davenport is where Palmer kept his office in the Ryan Building on Brady Street; he opened his school there in 1897, and Palmer College's main campus has stayed in the city ever since.

Who was D.D. Palmer's first chiropractic patient, who said his hearing was restored?

Harvey Lillard, the janitor in Palmer's building, said he had been deaf for 17 years, ever since injuring his back; Palmer worked on his spine and Lillard reported that he could hear again.

The word 'chiropractic' comes from Greek roots meaning what?

Done by hand is the loose sense of the Greek cheir, hand, plus praktikos, practical. 'Surgeon' grew from the same root: the Greek kheirourgos was someone working by hand.

What was D.D. Palmer's occupation before he founded chiropractic?

Magnetic healer was his trade for nine years: he treated the sick by laying on hands, and chiropractic began as an extension of that practice once he turned to manipulating the spine.

In which country was D.D. Palmer born?

Canada was Palmer's home for his first 20 years: born in Ontario in 1845, he emigrated in 1865 and taught school in Illinois for several years before moving on to Iowa.

From whom did D.D. Palmer claim to have 'received' chiropractic?

A dead doctor's spirit, Palmer said: the idea reached him at a spiritualist seance from Dr. Jim Atkinson, a physician who had died 50 years earlier.

What name is given to pain that runs from the spine down the back of one leg?

Sciatica is named for the sciatic nerve, the largest in the body. It usually strikes one side only and often clears up by itself, so time is frequently the only treatment needed.

What is the vitalist life force that early chiropractors believed flowed through the nervous system?

Innate Intelligence was Palmer's name for a vital, intelligent energy that he said ran the body through the nerves; block its flow at the spine, he reasoned, and disease would follow.

What term did Palmer use for the spinal misalignments he believed interfered with the body's function?

Subluxation in ordinary medicine means a partial dislocation that shows on imaging. Palmer's version was a slight misalignment said to disturb the nerves, which chiropractic's own researchers have called unproven dogma.

D.D. Palmer was slow to teach chiropractic to outsiders, fearing what?

Stolen ideas was the worry: he hoped to keep the method in the family, took his first student only in 1898, and for the next few years taught just one, two or three at a time.

After losing a court case in Iowa in 1906, D.D. Palmer chose what?

Jail rather than a fine was Palmer's choice, though the fine was paid after some weeks inside. He then passed the school to his son and went west to start new schools.

What did D.D. Palmer's estate claim had struck him at a parade in 1913?

A car driven by his son B.J. was the estate's claim, but an eyewitness said the old man had merely stumbled, grand juries refused to charge B.J., and the lawsuit was withdrawn.

What is the anatomical name for the tailbone at the very base of the spine?

Coccyx is the small bone, usually four fused vertebrae, that takes your weight when you sit down, which is why a fall onto it is such a common and lingering injury.

What diagnostic technology did B.J. Palmer endorse in 1910, prompting a faculty exodus from his school?

X-rays split the profession: B.J. built an X-ray laboratory at the school and coined the word 'spinograph' for its pictures, while those who objected walked out and competing schools sprang up.

What was the neurocalometer, B.J. Palmer's controversial 1924 invention?

Even fellow straights objected to it. The Activator technique's spring-loaded tool and the Thompson drop table came later.

Which future president got his first broadcasting job at B.J. Palmer's radio station WOC?

Ronald Reagan joined WOC as a sportscaster fresh out of college in 1932. B.J. Palmer had bought the station a decade earlier and used it to market chiropractic alongside farm, sports and weather reports.

Which was the first US state to pass a chiropractic licensing law, in 1913?

Kansas led the way after chiropractors, prosecuted in their thousands for unlicensed practice, campaigned for licensing laws of their own; the last state did not follow for another six decades.

Which was the last state to license chiropractors, in 1974?

Louisiana became the fiftieth state to license chiropractors in 1974, ending a campaign for separate licensing laws that had begun six decades earlier amid mass prosecutions for unlicensed practice.

Which US federal programme pays chiropractors only for manipulating the spine?

Medicare has covered chiropractic since the early 1970s, but only manual manipulation of the spine: tests, massage or acupuncture ordered by a chiropractor are left for the patient to pay.

What did the American Medical Association label chiropractic in 1966?

An unscientific cult was the label in the AMA's 1966 resolution, and it had teeth: the association's ethics code made it unethical for doctors to associate with chiropractors until the rule was dropped in 1980.

Which antitrust case, decided in 1987, found that the AMA had conspired against chiropractors?

Wilk v. AMA was filed in 1976 by Chicago chiropractor Chester Wilk and colleagues. After a first verdict for the AMA, an appeal and a retrial, a federal judge ruled in 1987 that the boycott was an unlawful restraint of trade.

Which body accredits chiropractic schools in the United States?

Council on Chiropractic Education is the accreditor the US Department of Education recognises, a status first won in 1974 that made chiropractic students eligible for federal loans.

Which US state was first to let 'advanced practice' chiropractors prescribe certain medications?

New Mexico is the exception to the rule that US chiropractors cannot prescribe: those holding its advanced-practice certificate, with credentials from the state pharmacy board, may order certain medications.

What is the most common reason people seek chiropractic care?

Low back pain is also where the evidence is least thin: reviews find spinal manipulation may help it, while support for treating conditions beyond the spine is lacking.

The word 'vertebra' is traced to the Latin verb vertere, which means what?

To turn is the sense of vertere. Dictionaries trace 'vertebra' to it, perhaps because the Romans pictured the spine as the hinge on which the body turns.

Which adjusting method uses a small spring-loaded tool to deliver precise thrusts?

Activator swaps the manual thrust for a quick, light tap from a hand-held instrument, and practitioners compare the patient's leg lengths before and after to judge whether it worked.

What is the most widely used chiropractic adjusting method?

Diversified is not one inventor's branded system but an eclectic mix drawn from several schools: the chiropractor gives a short, quick thrust by hand over a stiff joint to free its movement.

The spray of nerve roots at the bottom of the spine is named in Latin after which animal's tail?

A horse's tail is what cauda equina means in Latin: the nerve roots trailing down inside the lower spine are named for their resemblance to its long strands of hair.

What is the name for a sideways curve of the spine that most often appears between ages 10 and 15?

Scoliosis is rarely a sign of anything serious. Mild curves usually need no treatment at all, only checks to see that they do not worsen while the child is still growing.

Which region of the spine lies between the neck and the lower back and carries the ribs?

Thoracic vertebrae number twelve, one for each pair of ribs. The rib cage braces this stretch of the spine so firmly that it is the stiffest part and the one least often injured.

Which long-necked animal has exactly as many neck vertebrae as a human?

Giraffe necks hold just seven vertebrae, the same as ours, each one greatly lengthened. Nearly every mammal keeps to seven, however long or short its neck.

What is the name of the topmost vertebra, C1, on which the skull rests?

The atlas is named for the Titan of Greek myth who bore the heavens on his shoulders, just as this ring of bone bears the skull. It swivels on a peg that rises from the vertebra below.

Which bone, five fused vertebrae, wedges the spine into the pelvis?

Sacrum is a single bone only in adults: its vertebrae start out separate and fuse in early adulthood into a solid wedge that passes the weight of the upper body on to the hips.

What are the shock-absorbing pads between the bones of the spine called?

Intervertebral discs are pads of cartilage that cushion the shock of every step, and their give is what lets the spine bend and twist without losing its strength.

What do scientists call the sudden forming of a gas bubble in joint fluid that makes a joint crack?

Cavitation was filmed by MRI in 2015: the crack came as the gas-filled space formed, not as a bubble burst, and the joint then needed about 20 minutes before it could crack again.

What is the inward curve of the neck and lower back called?

Lordotic curves are not there at birth: the one in the neck forms as a baby learns to hold up its head, and the one in the lower back as the child starts to sit and walk.

Which university announced in 2024 the first chiropractic doctorate at a US public research-intensive institution?

The University of Pittsburgh broke a century-old pattern with its Doctor of Chiropractic programme: until then the profession had been taught outside America's public research universities.

Which neck vertebra, second from the top, lets you shake your head from side to side?

The axis carries an upright peg of bone around which the vertebra above it rotates, taking the skull with it; that pivot is what allows the head to swing left and right.

The word 'spine' comes from the Latin spina, which originally meant what?

A thorn or prickle is what spina first meant in Latin before it was applied to the backbone. English kept both senses, which is why a cactus and a skeleton each have spines.

Neck manipulation is controversial for its possible link to which rare but serious injury?

Vertebral artery tear is the feared complication: the artery threads up through the neck bones, and a split in its lining can cause a stroke. How often manipulation is to blame remains disputed.

Which science writer was sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association over a 2008 column?

Simon Singh wrote in the Guardian that the association 'happily promotes bogus treatments' for children's ailments. It sued, lost in the Court of Appeal in 2010 and then withdrew the action.

Which statutory body regulates chiropractors in the United Kingdom?

General Chiropractic Council, the statutory regulator set up after the Chiropractors Act of 1994, declared in 2010 that chiropractic's founding theory of disease is a historical concept unsupported by clinical evidence.

Who is usually credited with coining the word 'chiropractic' from its Greek roots?

A patient, Samuel Weed, is credited in most accounts: Palmer wanted a learned name for his new method, and the Reverend Weed is said to have built one for him out of Greek early in 1896.

Which adjusting technique relies on a drop table and detailed procedural protocols?

Thompson technique is built around its table: padded sections give way slightly as the thrust is delivered, the idea being that the drop lets a lighter push do the work.

What was recorded as the official cause of D.D. Palmer's death in Los Angeles in October 1913?

Typhoid fever is what the death certificate records, and historian Joseph Keating used that to dismiss rumours that an earlier injury had killed him: trauma, he noted, does not cause typhoid.

B.J. Palmer bought a second radio station, WHO, in which city?

Des Moines gave Palmer his second station around 1930. Paired with WOC in his Central Broadcasting Company, it grew into a family media business that later added television.

B.J. Palmer was born in an Iowa town with which unusual name?

What Cheer is where his father kept a grocery store in the early 1880s: the future founder of chiropractic was then a small-town shopkeeper who had yet to treat a single patient.

Which Greek physician wrote about manipulating the spine more than 2,000 years before chiropractic was founded?

Hippocrates, for whom the doctors' oath is named, described manipulative treatment of the spine. Chiropractors cite him to argue that their craft has ancient roots rather than beginning in 1895.

According to the first chiropractic patient's daughter, what really came before her father's improved hearing?

A slap on the back, she said: Palmer, laughing at her father's joke, thumped him with the hand that held a heavy book, and a few days later he remarked that his hearing seemed better.

Chiropractors celebrate September 18 as the anniversary of which 1895 event?

The first adjustment, given to a deaf janitor, is what the day honours. Historian Joseph Keating doubted the date, though: the patient's own 1897 testimonial points to January 1896.

What ailment did D.D. Palmer say he relieved in his second case, after the first patient's deafness?

Heart trouble was the second case: Palmer said he found a displaced vertebra and gave quick relief. If two such different ills shared one cause, he reasoned, perhaps every disease did.

Years before chiropractic, D.D. Palmer spent a decade in Illinois growing berries and keeping what?

Bees and a fruit and berry nursery supported Palmer from 1871 to 1881. He then tried shopkeeping and schoolteaching, and was fifty by the time chiropractic came along.

Which old word for an aching lower back comes from the Latin for 'loin'?

Lumbago grew from lumbus, the Latin for loin. Doctors rarely have anything more exact to offer: in most bouts no specific cause is ever found, and the ache usually eases by itself within a few weeks.

The five vertebrae of the lower back are the largest in the spine because of what job?

Carrying the most weight is the reason: the lower a vertebra sits, the more of the body it must support, so these five are built far more robustly than the small bones of the neck.

In 1909 B.J. Palmer claimed there was no such thing as what?

Contagious disease did not exist, B.J. wrote in 1909: chiropractors, he claimed, found a cause in the spine for every illness supposed to be catching. That teaching fed the anti-vaccination streak still found in the profession.

The peg on the second neck vertebra is called the dens, the Latin word for what?

Tooth is what dens means in Latin, as in 'dental'. Anatomists named the peg for its shape and also call it the odontoid, or toothlike, process.

B.J. Palmer spent his final years at a home on St. Armands Key in which Florida city?

Sarasota was where he wintered through the 1950s and where he died in 1961; the beach house survives as the B.J. Palmer historic home, still furnished with his belongings.

What nickname did David D. Palmer, the third Palmer to run the school, earn?

The Educator completes a family set: his grandfather is the Founder and his father the Developer. As president from 1961 he prepared the school for full accreditation, which arrived only after his death.

Before taking over the family college, David D. Palmer studied business at which school?

Wharton, at the University of Pennsylvania, gave him business law and economics; he graduated in 1929, having decided he would need to know how to manage the school he was going to inherit.

Palmer College closed its West campus in June 2025; in which California city was it?

San Jose lost the campus after Palmer's board voted in 2022 to phase it out when the building lease expired in June 2025, citing the rising lease and the high cost of living.

Which cartoon dad fixes backs with a dented garbage can, enraging local chiropractors?

Homer Simpson stumbles on the cure by falling onto the can in the 2001 episode 'Pokey Mom'; his 'Spine-O-Cylinder' draws so many patients that rival chiropractors smash it.

What subject did Mabel Heath Palmer teach at the Palmer School for four decades?

Anatomy was her field: a graduate of Rush Medical College as well as the Palmer School, she wrote the profession's first textbook on it in 1918 and is remembered as the First Lady of Chiropractic.

What does 'HIO' stand for in B.J. Palmer's upper-cervical technique?

Hole In One was B.J.'s name for adjusting only the very top of the neck, the one spot he had come to believe held the key to health, and he rebuilt his school's teaching around it.

What illness, which left Clarence Gonstead bedridden at 19, led him to chiropractic?

Rheumatoid arthritis kept the teenage farm boy in bed until chiropractic treatment got him moving again; the experience sent him to the Palmer School, and he was in practice by 1923.

Clarence Gonstead built his large chiropractic clinic in which Wisconsin village?

Mount Horeb was his base for 55 years: he set up there in 1923, built a clinic that drew patients from far beyond Wisconsin, and was still living in the village when he died in 1978.

Before chiropractic, D.D. Palmer ran a grocery in Iowa and also peddled what?

Fish were his sideline in the early 1880s, goldfish among them, which is why some historians still refer to the founder of chiropractic as 'the fish monger'.

Who created the Activator Method?

Arlan Fuhr built the method around a leg-length check made before and after treatment, a test critics call unreliable because many people's legs are naturally unequal.

Which chiropractor originated applied kinesiology, or 'muscle testing', in 1964?

George Goodheart taught that a problem in any organ shows up as weakness in a particular muscle. When a 1988 double-blind trial tested the method on nutrient needs, it did no better than random guessing.

Which 2007 book by chiropractor Bradley Nelson popularised applied kinesiology?

The practice had already spread through Mormon alternative-medicine circles; Tara Westover's memoir Educated describes her mother taking it up in the 1990s.

About how many named chiropractic techniques are there, most of them variations on spinal manipulation?

About 200 named techniques exist, yet the variety is less than it sounds: they overlap heavily, and many differ from a neighbour only in small details.

John J. Nugent, who shut substandard schools, was nicknamed chiropractic's what?

Abraham Flexner's 1910 report reshaped America's medical schools; Nugent's drive closed or merged weak chiropractic colleges, so admirers borrowed the name, while opponents preferred 'the anti-Christ of Chiropractic'.

What did the AMA name the group it formed in 1963 to 'contain and eliminate' chiropractic?

Committee on Quackery never finished the job: it quietly disbanded in 1974, the very year chiropractors finally held licences in all fifty states.

What alias was used by the anonymous source who leaked the AMA's anti-chiropractic papers to the press in 1975?

Sore Throat set the AMA hunting for a mole with changed locks and lie-detector tests; the leaked papers gave chiropractors the evidence for the antitrust suit they filed the following year.

In which long-running CBS sitcom did Jon Cryer play Alan Harper, a twice-divorced chiropractor?

Two and a Half Men began with Cryer as the luckless sidekick, but after Charlie Sheen was fired in 2011 he became the lead and won a second Emmy for the same role.

What was the title of the 2008 Guardian column that led the British Chiropractic Association to sue for libel?

Beware the Spinal Trap backfired on the plaintiffs: its author's supporters lodged complaints against hundreds of British chiropractors, and the case helped bring about the Defamation Act 2013.

Which book on alternative medicine did the science writer sued by Britain's chiropractors co-write with Edzard Ernst?

Trick or Treatment weighed the evidence for chiropractic and other alternative therapies, and its authors dedicated it, with pointed irony, to the Prince of Wales, a champion of such medicine.

Which body did B.J. Palmer found in 1926 and preside over until his death?

International Chiropractors Association began as B.J.'s Chiropractic Health Bureau, which he formed with his loyal 'straights' after the uproar over his neurocalometer led him to resign from the older association he had founded.

Sherman College, a bastion of 'straight' chiropractic, is in which state?

South Carolina's Sherman College, opened near Spartanburg in 1973, held so firmly to 'straight' teaching without medical diagnosis that it was refused accreditation and answered with years of lawsuits.

Life University founder Sid Williams played defensive end for which college football team?

Georgia Tech football left Williams with injuries that chiropractic care relieved, the experience that sent him to Palmer and a new career; the Yellow Jackets later named him to their Hall of Fame.

Life University, the chiropractic school founded by Sid Williams, is in which Georgia city?

Marietta's campus grew into the world's largest chiropractic college, then had its accreditation pulled in 2002 and saw enrollment drop before a federal court restored the status the following year.

Logan University's Chesterfield, Missouri campus occupies the grounds of a former what?

Catholic seminary buildings came with the 112-acre hilltop Logan bought in 1972, and three decades later the college turned the old Maryknoll chapel into its library.

The Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College, founded in 1945, is in which city?

Toronto got the college when chiropractors from Vancouver to Halifax, organized as the Dominion Council, decided the profession needed a school of its own; it opened on Bloor Street in September 1945.

Europe's first chiropractic college, the AECC, is based in which English seaside town?

Bournemouth's college opened in 1965 with money from chiropractors across Europe, who until then had to cross the Atlantic to train; it is now the chiropractic school of Health Sciences University.

The University of Western States grew out of a chiropractic school founded in 1904 in which city?

Portland had already drawn D.D. Palmer, who moved west in 1902 and started a short-lived school there; John Marsh's school of 1904 lasted, and grew into the University of Western States.

Leaked papers that exposed the AMA's campaign against chiropractic in 1975 were later tied to agents planted by which group?

The Church of Scientology, long denounced by the AMA, is reported to have struck back by planting members in its offices as secretaries; papers they copied reached the press and armed chiropractors for an antitrust suit.

In which city was the World Federation of Chiropractic established in 1988?

Sydney hosted the 1988 World Chiropractic Congress, and the national associations meeting there set up the federation to speak for the profession to international health bodies.

In which US state can chiropractors be certified to deliver babies by natural childbirth?

Oregon law counts minor surgery as part of chiropractic, so its board certifies chiropractors for it and, separately, for obstetrics after supervised training at natural births.

Donald Unger cracked the knuckles of only his left hand for decades, earning what in 2009?

An Ig Nobel Prize in medicine honored the experiment: the hand he cracked every day ended up no worse off than the one he spared, so the old warning that the habit ruins joints failed a very long test.

Joshua Haldeman, a Saskatchewan chiropractor and amateur pilot, was the grandfather of which tech billionaire?

Elon Musk's mother, Maye, was born in Regina to Haldeman, who helped found Canada's chiropractic college before taking the family to South Africa, where his grandson grew up.

Which long-necked animal has exactly the same number of neck vertebrae as a human being?

The giraffe gets its height by stretching each bone rather than adding more: every one of its neck vertebrae is over 28 cm (11 in) long.

In which long-running CBS sitcom does Jon Cryer play Alan Harper, a perpetually broke chiropractor?

Two and a Half Men plays Alan's thin earnings for laughs: by the fourth season he is paying alimony to two women while living in his brother's beach house.

Which English king's skeleton, dug up beneath a Leicester car park in 2012, showed severe scoliosis?

Richard III had a curve that may have lifted one shoulder above the other, and it helped identify the bones. It is thought to have set in during his teens.

Members of which profession grow about an inch taller at work as their skeletons fully extend?

Astronauts gain about 2.5 cm (1 in) within a month in orbit, because without weight pressing down on it the skeleton stretches to its full length.

Which birds can swivel their heads about 270 degrees thanks to having 14 vertebrae in the neck?

Owls need the flexible neck because their tube-shaped eyes are fixed in their sockets, so the whole head has to turn whenever they want to look sideways.

Which eight-time Olympic sprint champion has scoliosis, a spinal curve that left one leg shorter than the other?

Usain Bolt revealed the condition in his autobiography, writing that the curve made his right leg half an inch (13 mm) shorter than his left.

In The Simpsons episode 'Pokey Mom', which household object does Homer turn into a rival to chiropractors?

A garbage can dented into just the right shape cures Homer's back when he falls onto it, and the episode drew complaints from real chiropractors after it aired.

Chiropractor Bryan Abasolo won Rachel Lindsay's final rose, and her hand, on which reality dating show?

The Bachelorette closed its thirteenth season in 2017 with Lindsay, the franchise's first African-American lead, accepting the 37-year-old's proposal.

Which nerve, running from the lower back down the back of each leg, is the body's longest and widest?

Sciatic irritation causes the shooting leg pain known as sciatica, which a cough or a sneeze can briefly make worse.

Which US president was often pictured in an Oval Office rocking chair prescribed to ease his back pain?

John F. Kennedy was given the rocker by his physician Janet Travell, and photographs of him using it made rocking chairs fashionable with the public.

Which TV exercise pioneer, nicknamed the 'Godfather of Fitness', graduated from a chiropractic school?

Jack LaLanne opened what is called the nation's first modern health club in Oakland at 21, then gave exercise advice on television for 34 years.

Chiropractor Kenzo Kase developed which product, widely seen on athletes at the 2008 Beijing Olympics?

Kinesio tape dates from the 1970s but took off only after rolls were donated to Olympic athletes in 2008 and 2012. The cotton strip stretches to 140% of its length.

Animal chiropractors most often work on racing greyhounds, household pets and which other animals?

Horses are such regular clients that their practitioners have a title of their own, equine chiropractors. A few have even worked on dolphins, elephants and iguanas.

Which British royal wore a 2018 wedding dress designed to display the scar from her scoliosis surgery?

Princess Eugenie had two titanium rods fitted in her spine at the age of 12, and said she showed the scar to inspire others living with the same condition.

The twelve thoracic vertebrae of the middle back are the only ones that join directly to which bones?

The ribs meet small facets on the sides of these vertebrae, a feature found nowhere else in the spine, so the middle back anchors the cage around the lungs.

Which reptiles can have several hundred vertebrae, many times more than the human spine contains?

Snakes usually have between 200 and 400 vertebrae, sometimes more, and each bone carries projections for the strong muscles that let them move without limbs.

Which region of the spine has the largest vertebrae and, in cattle, sits beside the sirloin and tenderloin?

Lumbar vertebrae are the biggest because they help support the weight of the body, and a few people have one more or one fewer of them than usual.

Careful height measurements show that people are typically at their tallest at which time of day?

On waking you stand at full height, since hours of lying down add a little. In one study 100 children had shrunk an average of 1.54 cm (0.6 in) by late afternoon.

The brain and the spinal cord housed inside the vertebrae together make up which part of the body's wiring?

The central nervous system is wrapped in protective membranes called the meninges and bathed in fluid, and the cord runs through a canal inside the backbone.

The 'funny bone' is no bone at all but which nerve, exposed where it passes the elbow?

The ulnar nerve is the largest in the body with no muscle or bone shielding it, so a knock at the elbow fires a tingle down to the little finger.

The coccyx, or tailbone, takes its name from the Greek word for which bird, whose beak it resembles?

Cuckoo is 'kokkyx' in ancient Greek, a word Greek physicians used for the end of the spine because its last few bones curve like the bird's bill seen from the side.

The middle of the three membranes wrapped around the spinal cord is named for looking like what?

A spider's web is what the fine, open strands of the arachnoid mater resemble. It lies between the tough dura mater and the delicate pia mater that clings to the cord itself.

Which injury, now linked with car crashes, was known as 'railway spine' when train collisions were its main cause?

Whiplash is a colloquial name for a sudden distortion of the neck, and it remains one of the most common non-fatal injuries in car crashes.

Which name is given to the second vertebra of the neck, C2, known for a strong bony peg called the dens?

The axis takes its name from the Latin for axle. Its peg rises from the top of the bone, and a malformed one can make contact sports too risky to play.

The stiff, fused backbone seen in advanced ankylosing spondylitis is nicknamed after which plant?

Bamboo spine gets its jointed look when bony bridges form between neighbouring vertebrae. Signs of it were once thought to show in a 5,000-year-old Egyptian mummy.

Which labourer gives a name to a fracture at the base of the neck, seen in Australians flinging heavy loads overhead?

Clay shoveler's fracture hit ditch diggers who tossed sticky loads 10 to 15 feet up: when one clung to the blade, a pop between the shoulder blades ended the day's work.

Victor Hugo's Quasimodo is literature's best-known picture of which exaggerated rounding of the upper spine?

Kyphosis in older people is sometimes called dowager's hump, while its classic teenage form, in which vertebrae grow wedge-shaped, is named after Scheuermann.

In the Adams test, often used to screen school students for scoliosis, what is the student asked to do?

Bend forward as far as possible and any uneven prominence along the back stands out, which is the cue to confirm a sideways curve with imaging.

The Graston Technique, used by some chiropractors on tight muscles, rubs patients with six tools made of what?

Stainless steel instruments of set shapes and sizes are patented, and practitioners need the parent company's permission before they may use the trademarked name.

Chiropractor Forrest Shaklee is credited with formulating the first American example of which daily supplement?

Multivitamin history in the US starts with his 'Vitalized Minerals' of 1915, the year he graduated from Palmer's school; he later founded the company that bears his name.

Chiropractor Tom Mason doubled for the late Bela Lugosi, face hidden by a cape, in which film?

Plan 9 from Outer Space director Ed Wood used Mason even though he was taller than Lugosi and looked little like him, which is why he hunches and covers his face in every scene.

Chiropractor Volney Mathison invented which electrical gadget, later adopted by the Church of Scientology?

E-meter needles swing across a scale while a person grips two electrical contacts. Mathison called his version the Electropsychometer, and fellow chiropractors used it too.

Howard Wasdin, later a chiropractor, co-wrote a memoir about his years as a sniper in which elite force?

Navy SEALs sniper Wasdin won the Silver Star in Mogadishu in 1993, and his book reached shops a week after his old unit joined the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

Chiropractor Seun Adigun founded Nigeria's first team in which Winter Olympic sport, competing at the 2018 Games?

Bobsled had never seen an African team at a Winter Olympics before hers. Adigun had already run the 100 metres hurdles at the 2012 Summer Games, and two team sleds were named for her late sister.

Chiropractor Terry Schroeder, model for a statue outside the Los Angeles Coliseum, played which Olympic sport?

Water polo brought him two Olympic silver medals as a player and another as head coach of the 2008 US men's team. The headless bronze was made for the 1984 Games.

Which two-time Mr. Olympia, best man at Arnold Schwarzenegger's wedding, was also a qualified chiropractor?

Franco Columbu, a Sardinian shepherds' son and former boxer, earned his degree from Cleveland Chiropractic College in 1977, the year after his first Olympia title.

Karyn Marshall, later a chiropractor, was the first woman to clean and jerk over 300 lb in which sport?

Weightlifting held its first women's world championship in 1987 and she won it; she later credited chiropractic care with steering her away from painkillers.

In which 1990 psychological horror film does Danny Aiello play Louis, a chiropractor who rescues the hero?

Jacob's Ladder has Louis march into a nightmarish hospital, where his friend Jacob has been told he is already dead, to carry him out and treat him.

Chiropractors first treated athletes at an Olympics in 1976, at the Summer Games held in which city?

Montreal was where Leroy Perry became the first to do it. The US team waited until the 1980 Winter Games at Lake Placid to appoint an official chiropractor of its own.

D.D. Palmer's first chiropractic patient worked in Palmer's office building in which job?

The janitor had a severe hearing impairment, which Palmer linked to a noticeable lump on his back; the claim that working on it restored his hearing launched the profession.

D.D. Palmer is remembered as chiropractic's founder; by which title is his son B.J. Palmer known?

The Developer ran research clinics for 16 years, bought a radio station to market the profession and wrote a book about his family's travels across Asia.

Besides vaccination, which public-health measure applied to drinking supplies have some chiropractors long opposed?

Fluoridation drew early opposition from chiropractors who saw it as an infringement of personal freedom, though other chiropractors have actively promoted it.

Clinton Clauson, a Palmer-trained chiropractor, was elected governor of which US state in 1958?

Maine voters handed him an upset win as a Democrat while Republicans dominated the state, but he died in his sleep before the end of his first year in office.

Which ancient Egyptian text, the oldest known surgical treatise on trauma, includes advice on treating spinal injuries?

The Edwin Smith Papyrus, named for the American who bought it in Luxor in 1862, stands out among Egyptian medical texts for avoiding magic: it advises keeping an injured spine still.

Which US city names a scoliosis brace whose metal bars rise from a pelvic girdle to a ring around the neck?

Milwaukee braces are often prescribed for 23 hours a day until a child stops growing, and are usually custom-made over a mould of the wearer's torso.

Fred Cox, an NFL kicker who also qualified as a chiropractor, invented which toy and sold it to Parker Brothers?

The Nerf football earned him decades of royalties on tens of millions of sales, yet Cox said chiropractic paid about double what he made as a player.

Chiropractor Erle 'Doc' Painter was the trainer who treated Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig at which baseball team?

New York Yankees players were in his care for 13 years, and he once accidentally burned Joe DiMaggio's foot with a heat-therapy machine as the 1936 season began.

Chiropractor Kam Yuen was stunt coordinator and David Carradine's instructor on which 1970s television series?

Kung Fu star Carradine credited Yuen as the inspiration for his character, Kwai Chang Caine, and Yuen also appeared on screen in two roles.

Judi Andersen, who later ran a chiropractic clinic in Hawaii, won which beauty title in 1978?

Miss USA took her to Acapulco, where she finished first runner-up for the Universe crown despite posting the highest interview and swimsuit scores.

Massachusetts chiropractor Jon Sarkin found a new calling as what after a stroke changed his brain in 1989?

A visual artist emerged when he woke from surgery deaf in one ear and obsessed with drawing; his pictures crowded with words and images later became the subject of a book.