EPISODE SUMMARY
GUEST: Dr. Tyler Evans
Dr. Tyler Evans has been digging deep into the personal and professional history of Dr. William Blair, the developer of the Blair Upper Cervical Technique. Major sources in his research has been ancestry.com and newspapers.com
Dr. Blair grew up in Yale, Oklahoma, the son of an insurance salesman and postmaster. In his teens, his life was massively inhibited by severe asthma to the point that he was told he wouldn’t live past his teenage years. A young woman named Beatrice saved his life by referring him to an Upper Cervical Doctor. William Blair found relief and enrolled in Palmer College of Chiropractic during a time when there was lots of research and development of chiropractic techniques.
Some of the topics covered in this episode include:
Why Dr. Blair ended up in Lubbock, TX.
How his upbringing influenced his career.
Dr. Blair’s time at Palmer College; his exposure to research and technique development, as well as his own chiropractic care by Dr. Lyle Sherman.
The significance of Dr. Blair’s spinograhic research; using 2-D x-ray technology to see 3-D. Our modern technology proves his discoveries.
Discovering malformations and asymmetry and why that has helped so many people.
Why studying history is important to modern science and better patient outcomes.
Relevant episodes mentioned in this interview:
The benefits to 3-D CBCT imaging and what it can do for you with Chris Thornburgh and Lori Crowder
To contact Ruth:
806-747-2735
ruth@blairclinic.com
https://www.facebook.com/rutelin
Transcript
Welcome, welcome, welcome to What Pain in the Neck. I am Ruth Elder, your host, and I'm really pleased to introduce Dr. Tyler Evans today. And Dr. Evans, this is a repeat. Well, not a repeat.
It's a second time.
Yes, you're a repeat guest. And I don't know that I've done that before.
Oh, that's cool.
Yes. Other than here in-house, I've done it in-house, but you're the first person who don't live here at this clinic that have come back. And there's a particular reason I wanted to do this episode because I've had some requests. People have said, what is the Blair? What is the history of Blair? What's so special about Blair? And the reason I wanted to have you back on is you have done a deep dive in studying Dr. Blair as a person and the Blair technique history like nobody I know. And I think that's why you're here in Lubbock right now.
So why don't you just start by saying right now we're in Lubbock, Texas. You came here on a weekend between seeing patients all the way from New Hampshire. So what's so special about Dr. Blair that you want to devote all this time in studying one person like that?
Yeah, well, I would say, you know, maybe take a step back and have more of a 30,000 foot view. It's just that our chiropractic profession for me is - it's special and in the world of healthcare, there's nothing else like it, of course, but.
Okay, so it's special how?
It's special in the way that 1895, D. D. Palmer, supposedly there's historical arguments about whether or not it was 1895, but we'll go with 1895 for now. But I love the details and like how things developed and how things happen because in 1895, medicine was out there and was kind of growing as a profession, the medical profession. The AMA was formed in the 1850s, I believe.
AMA?
American Medical Association. The osteopaths actually came around in the 1860s. The guy in Kirksville, Missouri - Oh, goodness. I forget his name right now, but the guy that developed osteopathic work and very quickly, you know, the medical profession was trying to push out other professions like homeopathy or naturopathy or there were other ways that people did healing modalities. Bone setting was another thing that existed at the time. And I think our profession developed at a time when there was a need, and actually Dr. Blair talks about this in some of his biographical stuff that I just pulled up, that there was a need for alternatives to medicine. And so I just find that interesting because I think that's still, that's still relevant today. It's another concept of like, you see it over and over. It's just these repeating patterns, repeating cycles in human - in history. And my dad was a history buff. He had a degree in history in college. He ended up being a carpenter, but he loved history and we always talked about history.
So I think some of it comes from that but it's like it's understanding the past so that, 1. we don't repeat the failures of the past. And then 2. we take from, glean the best from what has happened and do the best work that we can with what has been. And then maybe build on that.
And interestingly, I'm sitting here thinking about the first episode where I interviewed you and we were talking about some research and some cutting edge, new stuff that's coming in. So can you tell us about how that fits in with studying history?
I'm trying to recall what research we were talking about particularly.
We were talking about CT scan. And also the fact that you were very cutting edge. You're involved in lots of research in general.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. My wife and I published a paper in 2020 or 2021. I can't remember now, but I have a nine month old, so everything's kind of eclipsed by having a nine month old. But we published a paper on Cone Beam CT and then there've been a couple other papers in the past on Cone Beam that are foundational and we are taking from what Dr. Blair did in the 1950s, 60s, 70s, and we're able to use his concepts with this new technology and literally, like, unwrap what he was thinking and get to the nitty gritty details of what was there. And he was creating an analysis to correct a problem between the brain and the body through the upper neck through C1 and C2.
And, C1 and C2 being the…
Top two vertebrae. So doing that, he revolutionized the work that was already existing and the people that came before him, B. J. Palmer. So D. D. Palmer's son, B. J. Palmer had developed upper neck work, C1 and C2, because of the importance of that area. We then get Dr. Blair comes in, he graduates from school in 1949. And then he develops his technique and now we are able to use, utilize his thoughts and his procedures, but take them to a whole nother level. And so I think, there's another concept, right, is like understanding what he was doing, what really what he was trying to accomplish, so that we can better understand what we're looking at today.
Yeah. Okay. So you set yourself up perfectly for introducing Dr. Blair. So why don't you go back to the beginning? Who was he? And how did he end up being a well known person within chiropractic? So you just share what you feel like is important. Take it from the beginning.
So I was just doing the math in my head. I believe - I haven't looked at it in the last few months, but I believe he was born in 1922 in Oklahoma in the middle of nowhere. And what's fascinating to me about Dr. Blair is he grew up between WWI and WWII. He grew up in the Dust Bowl during the Great Depression. And his dad had a rough life. He lost a wife to a train crushing her and their daughter almost getting crushed and he pulled, his daughter out and he was a railroad guy, I think it was 1910, and then Dr. Blair comes around in 1922 after he met a new woman and got married; his dad. And it's just fascinating, the hardships that they faced. I mean, you read the stories.
So that must have been kind of where Dr.Blair got his grit from. Of course, I'm going out of order because I know about that. So, I'm skipping, I guess, the timeline a little bit.
Going on, he goes to school, he played in a band and was in the newspaper and they were on the radio and all this stuff with his dad. They traveled Oklahoma and then he goes to school, he is a good student, but then in the newspaper clippings, you start to see an issue of asthma or he has medical problems. Like it was health problems. And I have a couple of clippings that say, Dr. Blair had to miss school today or Dr. Blair - it was Billy Blair then It wasn't Dr. Blair at that point, but, I find these clippings. I'm like, “oh, that's interesting.”
And can you talk a little bit about the newspaper? Cause you've told me some funny stories about newspapers.
Interestingly, there are two websites, Ancestry.com and Newspapers.com that I've come to love because it's just like a treasure trove of what we can find today.
Yeah, you said the newspaper announcements were kind of like social media of the day.
That's what it was. Yeah, it literally was. And depending on the person, some people had a whole life of newspaper clippings and some people had nothing, right? And so it’s fascinating.
So it just so happens…
The Blairs, so his dad was very active in the town that they were in Yale, Oklahoma, and he was a life insurance salesman at that point. He had changed like multiple professions, but at that point he was a life insurance salesman and then he became a postmaster and I think he's, from what I understand, he was still selling life insurance kind of in the background, but he was their postmaster general for Yale, Oklahoma. He met with higher ups in the federal government and stuff. So, anyways, that's all aside, but you get all these glimpses into their life via the newspaper. And some folks, like I said, don't have anything. And then, for some reason, George and his dad, and then Bill, they just had a ton of newspaper information. So for us it’s like “wow, that's amazing,” because then you can just read the whole life story of what happened.
So anyways, from what I've found, I believe that Dr. Blair graduated high school in 1941, although I just found something a moment ago that says he graduated in 1942, but that doesn't fit the timeline. Still trying to like really dial in the details on that, but it doesn't matter. What happened was Dr. Blair or Bill. he left school immediately after school, after he graduated from high school and had a severe asthma attack. We actually found the documented notary letter from his doctor saying, stating that Bill had a severe asthmatic attack and was basically, you know, gonna deal with that the rest of his life. So we have that. We scanned that in today. But anyways, so that's kind of the start of it, right? Like he's getting straight A's, but he's also dealing with a severe medical condition and the doctors are telling him like, “Hey man, you're not gonna make it.” From different sources, I found that they said he wouldn't live past his teens. So, at this point, he would have been 18 or 19.
So, he flees Yale. - I mean, I don't know if I would say flees, but, but he leaves Yale and heads to, down south to Lubbock, Texas. Why? Well, I went digging and George, his dad, had a sister in Lubbock. Her name was Leona Lee Blair Hemphill cause that was her husband's last name, Hemphill. But anyways, she ends up dying a year later, but Dr. Blair stays in Lubbock. I believe I found some things that said he went to Texas Tech, but then it also, a few things that say he was going to Oklahoma A&M, again, contradictory information, it's like, will we ever know? I don't know, but he was doing schooling at the time, but he was also working as a life insurance agent. selling life insurance, similar to his dad, right?
So it's like you see the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree, you know, and it's kind of the BJ Palmer, the guy who developed chiropractic, he was a never ending salesman, right? Like he always said early to bed, early to rise, work like hell and advertise. But that's the way that you had to be to make it back then.
Especially with something alternative, I think it was a lot less accepted than it is today.
Yes, absolutely.
All right. So now we have a little bit of a background. And so how does that…?
So he then meets Dottie Blair, what was her name? Beatrice. Beatrice Kobold. He meets Dottie and Dottie, in my opinion, saves his life because her mom is friends with a chiropractor, Dr. Bayer, I believe her name was Helen, her first name was Helen, in Houston. And Helen, then says, “Oh my, you have a really severe condition.” Like she adjusts him and I think he got worse, probably. None of that we ever documented, but it's interesting that she immediately says, “Go see this gentleman, Leon Halstead in the area.” He's in El Paso, I believe, and does upper cervical work. So this would have been early in the days of upper neck work. It would have been, you know, 1943, I think, or ‘44, ‘45 maybe? ‘45 actually because then and and upper cervical had only been around for 10 years. But almost immediately he gets results and within a year he turns around and marries Dottie and they move to Davenport, Iowa to go to school to learn the work because he's like “I got better, I'm healthy and I'm living and I'm making it okay. So I need to share this with the world.”
So it's a legacy of changing the world with whatever helped you.
Got it. Exactly. And I kind of vibe with that. You know, I probably wouldn't be here if it weren't for chiropractic. There are many reasons for that. One is that I think the profession itself gave me, you know, a burden of work to carry on, you know, like something to do with my life.
Purpose.
Yeah, purpose, right? And I think a lot of people lack that these days. So I'm very grateful to Chiropractic for that and the fraternity that I was a member of that really got me into that, Delta Sigma Chi, and they were a professional fraternity, not the kind you would maybe picture.
So, getting into that, here he is, He was a young guy. And so he turns around, goes right to chiropractic school in Davenport, Iowa, where the weather is terrible. And basically, a couple of different people say, to him like, “hey, if you can get through this, just get through Davenport. Because the winters are cold and snowy and the storms are rough. And in the summer it's humid and it rains” and that's terrible for asthmatics. So that all gets to him, but he stays under - we actually just found the BJ Palmer chiropractic clinic notes from the clinic itself, where he was under care with not BJ, but it would have been Lyle Sherman, who was the director of the clinic at the time.
These are some really big names in chiropractic for those who don't know.
So that's what's cool is like, Dr. Blair lived at a time, maybe not in the dead center of some of the development of upper cervical, but definitely in the era in which it was thriving. And then he - It kind of like was around for the, - I don't want to say the end of the upper cervical era at Palmer, but it kind of was.
So B. J. Palmer died in 1961 and his son didn't have the same gumption for the technique and didn't support the work quite as much. And there's conflicting ideas about that too, but everything I've ever read, Dave, BJ's son, he, who was the president of the school, he really kind of pushed out upper cervical.
So that's an interesting story, that's a whole nother thing. That's a whole nother episode. So I would like to bring it back to Dr. Blair and how the Blair technique came to be. Because right now, chiropractors around the world know about the Blair Technique. So how did that come to be?
So, he graduates in ‘49 with the Pruitts, Marianne and Sterling Pruitt Sr. They were in Fort Worth, Texas and they were big names in Texas for chiropractic, right? And so they had this kind of close Texas community there in Davenport that then they, they all graduated at the same time. And there, he was connected with the research there, the research at the clinic. So Dr. Blair actually found newspaper clippings almost immediately in 1950, he was going back to Davenport to do postgraduate research. And at the same time literally three years after he graduated. So he graduated in 49, like 1953, he's presenting spinographic research, his x-ray research on things that he's found. And he's presenting it to Palmer.
Okay. So why don't you sum up? What was it that Dr. Blair found on the x-rays that revolutionized? Well, my life.
So, I think, really, if you look at it, you know, it's like, ‘49 he graduates, 50 to 60 is the development of everything. So we just found an x-ray that has the Blair view x-ray, like the traditional Blair view x-ray in 1959, and I didn't know it went back that early. But basically between 50 and 60, he does a deep dive and he starts really shouting from the mountaintops, his findings of this idea called malformation and that a malformation and asymmetry in the neck are causing For the average person, they're causing most upper neck chiropractors to not get the results that they would like to, right?
And so he says, “well, here's the problem.” Now, In ‘53, I don't think he had the answer quite yet, but he was working on it. And so he was presenting this research like, “hey, these malformations and these asymmetries. So from right to left and top to bottom, things are not equal from right to left and top to bottom. So you can't draw a line.”
In other words, we're not made straight.
We're not made straight.
And nobody is made the same as somebody else.
Exactly. So from right to left, even in our own bodies, we're not even and then from me to you, Ruth, we're not the same.
Even twins, I understand. Identical twins are not the same.
Oh, yeah. I mean, there can be massive differences. So anyways, he's like initially presenting on this and the clinic at Palmer and BJ are Recording this and taking it into account by the time it gets to the mid 50s late 50s. He's on a new technique and he's developed his adjustment He's developed his x rays and he's teaching it. Come 1961 I believe he gave his first seminar and it really revolutionized the upper neck work.
Seminar means he was invited other chiropractors to come and learn.
And that was the year BJ died, the guy who developed the upper neck work. So what was interesting is that it was a carrying on of the research and it was really taking everything to the next level and he was doing it at a time with - I mean not that the x rays aren't good, but two dimensional x rays I mean, it's hard to think in 3d and he was thinking in 3d and he was getting three dimensional information out of these 2d x-rays that really solved the answer of why folks weren't getting the results that they were looking for.
So my mentor, the doctor who got me well, Dr. Muncy was Dr. Blair's best friend and they did a lot of research together. I heard him say every day when I worked for him, Dr. Blair was way ahead of his time. And I think this right here is what he meant, that he was able to figure out how to make a 2D technology and see it in 3D. And then what Dr. Muncy said also that he was able to develop it in such a way or teach it in such a way that average people who weren't as smart could just duplicate the system that he did and see the same things. And I would like to add, we've talked in the previous episode that we talked to you about, we talked about 3D imaging that's available now.
So would you like to, as a modern doctor, address the work that Dr. Blair was doing and how that fits in with the new technology that we have today?
So I think truth is - there's a saying: truth crushed to earth will rise again the eternal years of God or hers, right? So that's a I think it's from Lord Byron, but truth is like a lion you set it free and it will take care of itself, right? Like he was on to what - I like to be a little bit spiritual about it, right? Like when Albert Einstein developed his theories, and his equations, or Newton, they got them down to the simple equation that works. And it works in many different ways, but it's provable, right? And it's provable now, and it was provable then. And it's the same thing with this and I forget the quote now, but I think it's an Albert Einstein quote, but it's when you get down to the way the universal principle is made, the truth, then you're knocking on God's door kind of thing. Like, it's kind of cool, right? Like you're like tapping into the infinity of the universe.
And what's, I think, very interesting about the Blair work is there's a truth there. And he found it and he found multiple different pieces of it. He found really three pieces, the malformation asymmetry, the protracto view, the x-ray view that he does, and then the adjusting, the way to correct it.
And so now we're able to take our Conebeam CT that is amazing technology. It's dental technology developed in 2000 for a dental profession.
Yeah, I actually have a whole episode on that. So I'll just link to that.
So now here we are you guys have one, I have one. And quite frankly, I would never practice without it. I would love to have x-ray too, but you know, having that Cone Beam, it allows you to get a three dimensional picture that's a real three dimensional image and then slice it any way that you would like. And you can get exactly what Dr. Blair was looking for and there's nothing in the way and it proves his work.
Yeah, that's pretty cool.
So, it proves his work. So if I'm just a normal person, maybe I'm having some health issues, and I don't know where to turn. Maybe I've tried a chiropractor and I was frustrated with it. Why is all of this important? Like, why is all of this relevant?
Well, our brain communicates all the signals to our body through our neck. The neck is the most dynamic joint. Your upper neck, C1 and C2, are the most dynamic joints in the whole spine. And you literally have a life force in there in that upper neck that if you set it free, it will heal your body. And people when they're out of alignment are living a dimmed life, right? They're not living at their optimal level, right?
And so yeah, so when you're saying in life force, it's the brainstem area, right?
Yeah, so it's like it's the nervous system healing our bodies and when that upper neck is out of alignment you can't heal as well a percentage, right? And so for some people that's 50 percent you adjust them and their life changes. Their vision gets better. Their hearing gets better. You know, it's crazy some of the stuff we see.
Every day, every day. It's pretty cool.
Right and that goes back to that 1895 comment of like “Wow, like thank you D. D. Palmer for developing chiropractic in the first place.” But then on top of that, you know BJ comes up with an upper neck work. Now here we are. We've got cone beam CT. We're looking and proving the principles that all these guys came up with over the years this like sequential thing and people get faster results they get you know, it's more reliable. There's less retakes. It's just another level of care.
Dr. Evans. We could be talking for days, which you kind of have done, but what is something that I haven't asked you in this episode that you just really think is significant that you want to get across.
This is about history, right? Or like, you know, preserving our past as chiropractors, right? And as Blair upper cervical chiropractors. I think that progress and progression are good, but we don't want to have such an open mind that our brains fall out kind of thing. And we want to preserve the past so that we don't make the mistakes that have already been made. And learn to basically take what's already happened and make it better. And yeah, there might be things that there are new ideas and new things, but hey, some of this stuff, I've never seen before. So those are holes in the story that we're missing. They completely changed the story.
So, you know, I just think it's important that we - I think our society as a whole is very quick to move on these days and not read as much and not, you know, it's like, how many people read one book a year? It's very small. How many people write anymore. It's very small. Most people text or type, you know, I find those things important to preserve so that we protect our future. Right. So that's kind of my podium talk.
Yeah. That's’ great. Thank you so much for your time.
Yeah. Thank you.