Chiropr Hist. 1994 Dec; 14(2): 12-20.

Willard Carver, LL.B., 1866-1943: doctor, lawyer, Indian chief, prisoner and more.

Jackson RB.

Willard Carver was a pioneer in chiropractic education who founded seven schools, and ardent legislative leader in Oklahoma, who later suffered indignation from authorities that brought him to the Senate's bar of justice, was convicted and sent to jail. How this episode fostered defeat by a referendum petition of a proposed medical practice act at the polls, laying groundwork for passage of Oklahoma's Chiropractic Act in 1921, is recalled in this paper. Carver became a prolific author of textbooks, a life-long antagonist to Dr. B.J. Palmer, both invested as Indian chiefs, loved and hated by equal numbers of tribesmen and a remarkable chiropractic pioneer of great proportion.