Chiropractic Symbol California 1946

The history of chiropractic-past feels to be fading away as we move more into our digital world. Many practitioners and chiropractic-students no longer have access to historical information, as our analog items deteriorate, and slowly fade into nonexistence. Personally, I find historical archives fascinating, whether they be of a chiropractic nature or not. I don't recall liking history class when in middle school, but I find my love for studying all sorts of historical events, has grown over the years.

By Michael Dorausch, D.C.

The history of chiropractic-past feels to be fading away as we move more into our digital world. Many practitioners and chiropractic-students no longer have access to historical information, as our analog items deteriorate, and slowly fade into nonexistence. Personally, I find historical archives fascinating, whether they be of a chiropractic nature or not. I don’t recall liking history class when in middle school, but I find my love for studying all sorts of historical events, has grown over the years. Symbols and logos are a representation of thought during the time of their creation, and as an example we have this 1946 chiropractic logo.

Chiropractic Logo from 1946 Chiropractor PublicationThe chiropractor logo shown, or chiropractic symbol if you prefer, is from the cover of a 1946 publication by the California Chiropractors Association (CCA). It’s an example of post-World War II art. It was likely created in the earlier 1940s, but I will have to conduct a bit more research, in order to confirm. The publication date on this image was 1946. Harry S. Truman was president of the United States at that time and outside the state of California and a several others, the practice of chiropractic was illegal in much of the US.

It’s a fairly simple symbol but I find the words and images quite interesting. There’s a background of the state of California with four stars representing cities where the CCA operated. From north to south those cities are Sacramento (the state capital), San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego. During the 1940s, Los Angeles was the central hub for California Chiropractor activity. Los Angeles hospitals were funding chiropractic research, and there were two active colleges of chiropractic in the Los Angeles area. One was LACC, which in 1946 was located at 920 Venice Blvd. (operating today as Southern California University of Health Sciences in the city of Whittier), and the other was Ratledge College of Chiropractic on Olympic Boulevard (which was later purchased to become CCCLA).

The bird in the image appears to be a falcon or an eagle perched upon a staff, along with two intertwined serpents or snakes below it. The snakes seem more symbolic to the practice of medicine and they were removed in the symbol by the next decade. The three words inside the triangle read STRENGTH – HAPPINESS – HEALTH. That resonates with me just fine. Below the term health are two hands positioned as they would be when giving a spinal adjustment.

There are more historically related posts and photos available on the blog, and we’ll continue providing historical topics of interest in the news, from time to time (more likely when I’m not in the office).

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