From a single chapter at Palmer College in 1961 to a worldwide brotherhood of chiropractors — the history, principles, and tradition of the chiropractic profession's longest-standing professional fraternity.
Pi Kappa Chi was founded in 1961 at Palmer College of Chiropractic in Davenport, Iowa — a deliberate choice of location. Palmer College is, quite literally, where chiropractic began: it is the school founded by Daniel David Palmer, the man who delivered the first chiropractic adjustment in 1895 and who codified the discipline as a distinct healing art separate from medicine and osteopathy.
The founders of Pi Kappa Chi were students at Palmer who wanted something the chiropractic profession lacked: a true professional fraternity, modeled on the medical and legal Greek-letter societies, but built specifically around the principles, ethics, and craft of chiropractic. They wanted a brotherhood that would carry the chiropractic principle into every generation of doctors — not just a social club, but a working community of practitioners committed to one another and to the profession for life.
That founding intent has held. Today, more than sixty years on, brothers initiated in 1961 still hold relationships with brothers initiated last week — and they stand on the same three principles: Leadership, Dedication, Integrity.
To understand Pi Kappa Chi, you have to understand the chiropractic profession's relationship with Palmer College — and with the Palmer family.
Chiropractic was discovered on September 18, 1895 when D.D. Palmer adjusted the spine of Harvey Lillard, a janitor in Palmer's Davenport office. Lillard had been deaf for seventeen years following an injury, and reported the partial return of his hearing after the adjustment. Palmer recognized that he had stumbled onto something more general — that misalignments of the spine could interfere with the function of the body through the nervous system, and that hand adjustments could correct them.
D.D. Palmer founded the Palmer School of Chiropractic (now Palmer College) in 1897 to teach what he had discovered. His son, B.J. Palmer — sometimes called "the developer" of chiropractic — took over the school in 1906 and turned it into the global center of chiropractic education for the twentieth century. His grandson, Dr. David D. Palmer, served as president of the College through much of the period in which Pi Kappa Chi was founded.
Pi Kappa Chi was born inside this lineage. The fraternity has, from its founding, considered the preservation of the chiropractic principle — the recognition that the body has innate healing capacity and that the chiropractor's role is to remove interference from the nervous system through specific adjustments — to be at the heart of its identity.
Pi Kappa Chi has expanded carefully. After founding at Palmer, two additional chapters have been chartered at chiropractic institutions whose academic and clinical philosophy aligned with the fraternity's commitment to manual adjusting and principled chiropractic practice.
Palmer College of Chiropractic
Davenport, Iowa · Founded 1961
The founding chapter, located at the institution where the chiropractic profession itself was born. Alpha brothers have included countless leaders of the profession across the past six decades.
Logan University
Chesterfield, Missouri · Chartered June 1985
Gamma extended the brotherhood to Logan, one of the chiropractic profession's most respected colleges. Logan was founded in 1935 by Hugh B. Logan, DC, and is widely associated with the Basic Technique developed there.
Sherman College of Chiropractic
Spartanburg, South Carolina · Chartered November 2015
The most recent chapter to join the brotherhood. Sherman is known for its strong commitment to the philosophical foundations of chiropractic and to specific, hands-on adjusting — a natural home for Pi Kappa Chi.
The brothers of Pi Kappa Chi share a particular commitment to manual chiropractic adjusting — the use of the doctor's own hands to deliver specific, controlled force to a vertebral segment or joint with the intent of restoring its proper motion and relationship to the nervous system.
Manual adjusting is, in our view, not merely a technique but a craft. It is learned slowly, refined over a career, and represents the most direct application of what D.D. Palmer first taught in 1895. While chiropractic has rightly expanded to include instrument-assisted methods, soft tissue work, exercise rehabilitation, and other modalities, Pi Kappa Chi has always held that the manual adjustment is the foundational competence of the chiropractor — and that mastery of it is the highest expression of the doctor's craft.
This commitment shapes how brothers practice, how they train, and how they refer. When a brother in this directory refers a patient to another brother, they do so confident that the receiving doctor takes the adjustment seriously.
Leadership in Pi Kappa Chi is not a title. It is the expectation that brothers will take responsibility for the chiropractic profession — at the clinic level by caring well for patients, at the community level by educating the public, at the national level by serving in professional organizations and state boards, and at the educational level by mentoring the next generation of students.
Chiropractic is a long road. Dedication, in the Pi Kappa Chi sense, is the recognition that the work of being a chiropractor is a lifetime craft. Brothers dedicate themselves to ongoing scholarship, to the discipline of consistent practice, and most importantly to the patients they are entrusted to serve. Dedication outlasts initial enthusiasm. It is what separates a career from a job.
Integrity is the principle that everything a brother does — in the clinic, in business, in research, in their relationships with patients and other brothers — is held to a single, internally consistent standard of honesty. It governs how a brother bills, how they speak about other practitioners, how they document care, and how they conduct themselves when no one is watching. Integrity is what makes Pi Kappa Chi a credential rather than just a membership.
The brotherhood of Pi Kappa Chi expresses itself in concrete, everyday ways:
Today, the brothers of Pi Kappa Chi practice across all major regions of the United States, in Canada, and in chiropractic communities as distant as the United Kingdom, New Zealand, South Africa, and Singapore. The fraternity remains relatively small by design — Pi Kappa Chi has always valued the depth of brotherhood over breadth of membership.
This directory is the first comprehensive, public-facing record of the brotherhood — a working tool to find a brother near you, to refer a patient with confidence, and to make visible the network of practitioners who carry the chiropractic principle forward.
Add yourself to the directory and become part of the public record of the brotherhood.
Add your practiceContent on this page draws on the official Pi Kappa Chi fraternity website and standard sources on the history of chiropractic and Palmer College of Chiropractic. Brothers with additions or corrections to share are invited to contact us.