D.D. Palmer founded chiropractic in the 1890s, and his son B.J. Palmer helped to expand it in the early 20th century. It has two main groups: "straights", now the minority, emphasize vitalism, innate intelligence and spinal adjustments, and consider vertebral subluxations to be the cause of all disease; "mixers", the majority, are more open to mainstream views and conventional medical techniques, such as exercise, massage, and ice therapy.

Chiropractic is well established in the U.S., Canada and Australia and is the "third largest of the doctored health professions (behind only medicine and dentistry)". It overlaps with other manual-therapy professions, including massage therapy, osteopathy, and physical therapy. Most who seek chiropractic care do so for low back pain.

Throughout its history, chiropractic has been controversial. For most of its existence it has battled with mainstream medicine, sustained by pseudoscientific ideas such as subluxation and innate intelligence that are not based on solid science. Despite the general consensus of public health professionals regarding the benefits of vaccination, among chiropractors there are significant disagreements over the subject, which has led to negative impacts on both public vaccination and mainstream acceptance of chiropractic. The American Medical Association called chiropractic an "unscientific cult" and boycotted it until losing an antitrust case in 1987. Chiropractic has developed a strong political base and sustained demand for services; in recent decades, it has gained more legitimacy and greater acceptance among medical physicians and health plans in the U.S., and the principles of evidence-based medicine have been used to review research studies and generate practice guidelines.

Many studies of treatments used by chiropractors have been conducted, often with conflicting results. Manual therapies commonly used by chiropractors are effective for the treatment of low back pain, and might also be effective for the treatment of lumbar disc herniation with radiculopathy, neck pain, some forms of headache, and some extremity joint conditions. The efficacy and cost-effectiveness of maintenance chiropractic care are unknown.

Chiropractic care is generally safe when employed skillfully and appropriately. Spinal manipulation is frequently associated with mild to moderate adverse effects, with serious or fatal complications in rare cases. A systematic review found that the risk of death from manipulations to the neck outweighs the benefits. This has no relevance to manipulations performed below the cervical region.

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• Somatics on the WWWeb
  somatics.com
  Internet guide to Hanna Somatic Education, a variation of chiropractic care, with an explanation of the therapy, guide to clinics, and a search feature for finding additional information.
• Planet Chiropractic
  planetc1.com
  Provides features such as news, events, streaming multimedia, products.
• SpineGuys.com
  spineguys.com
  A free monthly on-line newsletter from Dr. T.J. McKay and Dr. G.P. Sadiwnyk, Chiropractors, Canada. Topics include nutrition, exercise, a children's section and how chiropractic helps.