Finding Langworthy:  The last years of a chiropractic pioneer.

Troyanovich SJ, Gibbons RW.  Chiropractic History.  January 2003;23(1):9-17

Abstract: 

Solon Massey Langworthy  (1868-1922) was one of the “shooting stars” that filled the sky of pioneer chiropractic.  He was a practitioner, a school founder and president, editor and author, researcher and inventor, and founder of the first national chiropractic association.  An early chiropractic historian said that he, “…was remarkable (in) his scholarship,” and that he, “had remodeled the house of chiropractic.”

One of the first 15 students of Daniel David Palmer, Langworthy would within the first half of the first decade of the new century achieve several impressive landmarks:  the first systematic school curriculum, the first legislature passed by a state, the publication of the first professional journal, co-authoring its first textbooks and formulating and patenting the first research and technique modalities.

Unsuccessful in his competition with both Palmers, his latter life was reduced to a practice and modality research.  A troubled personal life preceded his own failing health, and at age 54 Langworthy died in 1922 in Dubuque, the city of his birth, where he is buried in an unmarked grave.  His last years were researched for this work.

This paper will review his accomplishments and the larger forces that removed him from a dominant position in the early profession to the obscurity of his last years.