Portal:Complementary and Alternative Medicine/Selected biography/4

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Palmer was born in Pickering, near Toronto, Canada to Katherine McVay and Thomas Palmer.^[1] At age twenty he moved to the United States with his family. Palmer held various jobs as a beekeeper, school teacher, and grocery store owner, and had an interest in the various health philosophies of his day, such as magnetic healing, osteopathy, and spiritualism. Palmer practiced magnetic healing beginning in the mid-1880s in Burlington and Davenport, Iowa.

Palmer read medical journals of his time and followed developments throughout the world regarding anatomy and physiology. While working as a magnetic healer in Davenport, IA, he encountered a deaf janitor who he discovered had a palpable lump in his back. He theorized that the lump and his deafness were related.