• Valdivia J

• Chiropractic / history
• Nonprescription Drugs / history
• Palmer, Daniel David, 1845-1913 / history

This article considers D. D. Palmer's defense of patent medicines as an expression of democratic medicine and a form of populist resistance to professional authority. Although many contemporaries dismissed patent medicines as quack remedies, Palmer reframed them as tools that allowed ordinary people to pursue therapeutic freedom and exercise a measure of autonomy within an increasingly regulated medical marketplace. He did not defend the pharmacology of these products so much as the broader principle they represented: that lived experience and testimonial evidence could challenge the claims of medical elites. By describing patent medicines as "the poor man's doctor," Palmer offered a distinctly populist interpretation of health care, one anchored in accessibility, skepticism of monopolized expertise, and confidence in patient experience.

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