JOSEPH JANSE

by Dr Reed Phillips

JOSEPH JANSE, Apostle of Chiropractic Education

Chiropractic was born in an era of myths and poetic fables. Medicine was still letting blood, using leaches, and sheets soaked in whiskey to treat typhoid when DD Palmer 'cured' Harvey Lillard of deafness. No one will ever know whether it really happened or not.

It is Joseph Janse who is the father of modern-day chiropractic. Almost single handed he moved the profession from its dark ages to the accredited chiropractic institutions of today. Colleges of Chiropractic were formed and lost but Janse's college, the National College, together with the Palmer College, have stood the test of time.

A man filled with the love of God

is not content with blessing his family alone,

but ranges through the whole world,

anxious to bless the whole human race.

Jozias Janse was born in the Netherlands in 2009. His elder brother Adrian was born two years earlier with a 'spinal problem'. Doctors ordered the tiny child, not even a year old to be strapped to a board for 24 hours per day, 'to straighten him out.' As he grew older brother Adrian was compelled to sleep in plaster casts, and had to use braces of all kinds. This was the cauldron in which Joseph's love of the human frame was born.

Dr Reed Phillips, author of this fine biography, traces the life of the man he so obviously loved and admired, from pre-war Holland to the United States, and on to greatness. JJ as he was affectionately known had that way of touching people's lives.

One person who touched Janse's life was chiropractor Dr Fred Illi, a Swiss national. In 1940, JJ was Director of the Department of Anatomy at the National College, only 31 years old, when Dr Illi travelled to the States and they spent three arduous months dissecting the pelvis's of fresh cadavers, with special attention to the sacro-iliac joints. The results of their research was published, entitled "Sacroiliac Mechanism, Keystone to spinal balance and locomotion."

Dr Philips traces the influence that Fred Illi had on the young Joseph Janse, who later described Illi's work as "the most comprehensive procedure in the study of the structure, statics and dynamics of the human mechanism, ever conceived by anyone to date." Surely here was laid the foundation for the dedication that Janse laid to research at the National College.

A deeply spiritual man, a humble giant, he wrote to Dr Philips: "So often of late I confront myself with the question, "All that I sought to do, was it ego or dedication? Frankly I do not know." Surely, the mere asking of the question, one which few of us would dare to broach, yields the answer.

Not a book for every chiropractor certainly, but surely one that every student who came under his influence would not only want to have on his shelves, but have read from cover to cover. To order Joseph Janse, Apostle of Chiropractic Education by Dr Reed Phillips

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