A brief history of the adjusting table
By Roger J.R. Hynes, B.Sc., D.C. and Alana Callender, M.S.
There are many things in this world that are often taken for granted. Good customer
service, clean air, e-mail and a good cup of coffee—just to name a few.
These aren’t things you spend time pondering or pay much notice to until
they’re gone or out of service.
Think about your adjusting table. It’s easy to forget its value, but a
chiropractor couldn’t be in business without one.
“The first table was made by D.D., or one of his carpenter patients, out
of plain oak and pine wood, with a leather cover tacked on, with no felt or
hair padding underneath.”[Dye 175]
This is not the table exhibited at the Palmer Museum of Chiropractic History
as “The First Table.” The table on display, according to B.J., was
pulled into service from the washroom where it had held washtubs for the Palmers’
clinic. Instead, Dye is describing one designed for chiropractic adjustments.
The Early Years
The adjusting table has gone through many transformations over the years. The
first tables used simple construction and little to no decoration. Today’s
adjusting tables come in comfortable and durable materials, and they move up
and down and back and forth at the touch of a button.
“The first improvement was a board sloping from the forward end of the
table to the floor at an approximately 45 degree angle.”[Dye 176] The
patient’s head and neck draped over the inclined board, with the nose
and chin pointed into the board, making the adjustment easier to give by requiring
less force on the part of the adjuster.
Around 1905, two-piece tables became more popular. The front part of the table
was made with an upward slant. Forward part narrowed at the lower end of the
table to permit shoulders to rest flat on its surface without being hunched
up and to accommodate a lady’s chest; a slight portion of the rear table
was cut out to avoid injuring the male genitalia.
E.C. Adams, the proprietor and foreman of Adams Manufacturing Company, the “Suit
Case Factory” in Davenport, IA produced portable and office adjusting
tables from 1905-1916. His suitcase table was advertised in The Chiropractor
of 1908. Patented by B.J. Palmer and others, the table weighed 18 pounds and
held up to 1,600 pounds of live weight. The legs folded inside the 27”
x 16” x 5” frame and promotional literature proclaimed the inside
of the lower section could be used for toilet articles when making a short trip
to a nearby city. Another suitcase would be rendered unnecessary, making this
table a precursor to carry-on luggage.
As demand grew, many entrepreneurial table manufacturers popped up in Davenport,
most along Brady Street close to the chiropractic colleges. Several had good
designs while others were quite shoddy. Some stuck around for a while such as
AA Griffin Company, which was very popular in the teens and 1920s due to aggressive
advertising and a good product. Griffin, of Lansing, Mich., started producing
wooden tables in the teens that have proven remarkably durable. A 1913 ad shows
the open table adjustment of the two piece table was “done away with”
on the Griffin. It protected the “ladies with full breasts” and
“every muscle was relaxed” because of the superior support. This
table offered a split headpiece, an innovation not seen on the Palmer tables
until 1922. Griffin’s Hylo (or Hi-Low) was introduced in 1917.
Many companies of this era either merged with another or drifted into obscurity,
leaving many of their tables long gone. However, Griffin tables survive in abundance
today, this is either a tribute to the solidarity or simply to the number manufactured.
More parsimonious students copied many of these early, simple designs. A good
homemade table served the chiropractor well, but is of less interest historically
than one that has a manufacturer’s label.
The Palmer Hylo, the first mechanical table, was invented by Bert Clayton, D.C.,
in late 1910 or early 1911. It was rather cumbersome and the lifting mechanism
worked on compressed air. Doss Evins and W.E. Stiles helped in the development
of the Stiles Hy-Lo, moving from compressed air to springs and later from springs
to electric lift by motor. These tables were distributed by the Palmer School
of Chiropractic and, in 1914, sold for $125. The Stiles Hy-Lo was replaced in
the Palmer sales room by the Palmer-Evins Automatic Hylo in 1921, “Built
like a Packard.” Although it was a high-end table, there was no accommodation
for the nose, putting it in the category of “nosebreaker.”
| The
Evolution of the Adjusting Table |
After the Clayton-Palmer Hy-lo, other manufacturers entered the field. Tables
made of brass and steel generally displaced the wooden tables.
According to an interview with Jim Moulton, historian of Williams Manufacturing
of Elgin, Ill., the company was originally located in Muscatine, Iowa, and appears
to be the oldest continual manufacturer of tables, dating back to 1919. Dr.
William Williams developed a product line called the Zenith tables, denoting
the highest possible quality, and introduced that line in 1922. Williams was
involved in at least a dozen licensing agreements with professors and practitioners
such as Clay Thompson.
Major Innovations
William Heath Quigley, in his book “The Palmer Saga”, credits Clay
Thompson for introducing a number of innovations to the chiropractic profession.
He enrolled in the Palmer School following World War II and as a student, developed
and patented a clamp for accurate and reproducible positioning of the head for
cervical X-rays. He also developed the speeder board for practicing thrusting
procedures. On graduation, Thompson joined the faculty and simultaneously developed
a growing practice. He developed an ingenious idea for cervical adjusting—he
elevated the headpiece by about a half-inch. This way, when the thrust was applied
to the cervical vertebrae the force caused the head rest to fall one half inch
and then suddenly stop. The net result was greater comfort for the patient and
a greater efficiency with less force applied by the chiropractor. Arrangements
were made through the sales department to make what Thompson had named the Palmer-Thompson
Headpiece available to the profession. For many months, sales exceeded the manufacturer’s
ability to supply the device. Thompson had made financial arrangements with
the school that on the basis of the additional income from headpiece sales,
faculty salaries would be increased.
Kyneur and Bolton point out the parallels between the development of adjusting
techniques and the tables to support the patient positioning. The knee-chest
table was introduced in the mid 1920s and the side-posture table for specific
upper cervical adjusting was introduced by Rock in the 1930s and picked up by
Williams Manufacturing.
When Palmer started teaching techniques other than the Hole-in-One in the mid-1950s,
Thompson expanded the principle of “the drop” to full spine adjusting.
There was some controversy over who should be credited with the design of the
table, but until the patent rights expired, a Palmer-Thompson Zenith adjusting
table could not be obtained without months on a waiting list.
Celebrity Endorsements and Oddities
In the early years, endorsement of a product was of utmost importance. B.J.
Palmer, the self-proclaimed leader of the profession was not immune to capitalizing
on his own reputation with the Palmer-Evins Hylo automatic adjusting table line
and later the B.J. Zenith side posture tables. In 1934, B.J. says the following
concerning a table that bears his name: “It is used by B.J. exclusively.
Chiropractors who desire to give chiropractic adjusting services will find exactly
what they need in this table. Few tables now on sale or in chiropractors’
offices make that possible. The profession is permitted to enjoy the B.J. kind
of chiropractic service. B.J. the chiropractor uses the chiropractic table built
for B.J. by B.J. for his personal, private, professional use.”
The osteopathic profession influenced design of distraction tables such as the
Spinalator or the Cropp “All-in-One” traction table. The most significant
impact of osteopathic tables on the profession yielded the Cox-McManis table
based on the 1909 McManis table used by osteopaths and developed by James Cox
in the 1960s for lumbar distraction work.
A few oddities have been introduced and had short lives, such as the Suspension
Arch Adjustment Couch, introduced by James Drain and W. H. Drain in 1933. “Built
to add years to the Chiropractor’s life, thoroughly relax the patient
and take the pain out of adjustments,” the couch was of all-steel construction
except the overstuffed cushions.
Tables of Today
Although the purpose of the chiropractic adjusting table remains unchanged,
“bells and whistles” have been added many times in an effort to
make the adjusting procedure easier for the doctor and on the patient. Back
in 1913 you could buy an Adams adjustable office table complete with moleskin
upholstering and abdominal support for $30. Today, it is not unreasonable to
see prices in excess of $10,000 for tables such as the popular Zenith Hylo 440
Thompson table at $10,696 or the Lloyd McManis Galaxy ultimate adjusting table
starting at $11,050, which seems to do everything except cook your dinner. Most
doctors of chiropractic starting out go for the more basic hylo models most
ranging between $4,000-5,000 new and averaging less than half those prices for
reconditioned used models.
In 1987, more than 20 table companies served the chiropractic profession. A
review of websites reveals that that number remains fairly stable today. Students
and practitioners with carpentry skills still build their own tables. Presently
the tables most commonly copied are most likely the trio of cervical chair,
knee chest and pelvic bench, probably due to the simplicity of their construction.
One can construct a useable pelvic bench possessing only rudimentary carpentry
skills with little more than some inexpensive lumber, foam padding, a durable
material for covering and a staple gun.
For the History Buffs
For those desiring more information on the evolution of the chiropractic table,
three general histories of the have been compiled. The first was by A. Augustus
Dye, D.C. in 1939 in his Evolution of Chiropractic. Dr. Dye was a 1912 Palmer
graduate and he wrote the first comprehensive history of the profession. Chapter
11 of his book is entitled “Chiropractic Office Equipment; Its Development.”
The next review of the development of the table was written by Dr. Dick Wells
and published in 1987 in Chiropractic History and the third is John Kyneur and
Stanley Bolton’s chapter on “Chiropractic Equipment” in Peterson
and Wiese’s 1995 Chiropractic: An Illustrated History.
Dr. Hynes is the educator for the Palmer Foundation for Chiropractic History
and teaches in the Technique Department at Palmer College. Alana Callender is
the director of the Palmer Museum of Chiropractic History and executive director
of the Association for the History of Chiropractic.
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