Sylva L. Ashworth, D.C., the "Grand old lady of chiropractic."

Sylva L. Ashworth was a 1910 Palmer graduate and pioneer whose zeal for chiropractic, diligence in political causes and winning personality placed her in the center of chiropractic activities during the profession's middle ages. Although a life-long friend of B.J. Palmer and a self-professed straight chiropractor, she was most active in the broad-scope organizations of his rivals, particularly the National Chiropractic Association (NCA). Dr. Ashworth is the only woman ever to serve as president of a national chiropractic professional association in the United States: the Universal Chiropractors' Association in 1926. She was a founding member of the NCA (1930), the International College of Chiropractors (1938) and the Chiropractic Research Foundation (1944), ancestor of today's Foundation for Chiropractic Education and Research. Dr. Ashworth was a "liberated" woman and independent thinker before women's suffrage, and thereafter became an active player in state and national Democratic party politics. As long-time president of the Nebraska Board of Chiropractic Examiners and a founding member of the International Chiropractic Congress she participated in early struggles to standardize college curricula nationwide and in licensing battles with organized medicine in her state. Her daughter, Rose Ruth, was so inspired by her mother's work that she too became a chiropractor, and with her husband Carl Cleveland, founded the Cleveland Chiropractic College of Kansas City. ---------------------------------------Figure 1. Sylva, circa 1892, age 18 ---------------------------------------Sylva Lula Burdick was born to Joshua Phillip Burdick and Deborah Gray Burdick on November 27, 1874 in Peru, Nebraska. The Burdicks were descendants of early British immigrants to Rhode Island; Joshua Burdick is recalled as a prosperous farmer, stockbreeder and shipper . He helped to organize the Peru Normal College, and in 1887 he was elected Justice of the Peace, presumably in Peru, Nebraska. He walked with the help of a wooden leg owing to a combat injury sustained in the Civil War; he served in Company E of the Nebraska Cavalry. The future Dr. Ashworth was the ninth of 10 children; a brother Jerome is remembered as a "sharpshooter". Sylva attended Peru Normal College and prepared for a teaching career. She graduated in 1892, and on August 16 of that year married Pinckney E. Ashworth in Lincoln, Nebraska, the state capital. Mr. Ashworth is recalled as a farmer, school teacher, grocer and bookkeeper. Between 1893 and 1901 Sylva bore him five children, including (in 1895) the future Dr. Rose Ruth Ashworth Cleveland. Tragedy struck the Ashworths in April of 1902 when their fourth child, Lester, died short of his third birthday (see Figure 2). ---------------------------------------Figure 2. Sylva, with husband, Pinckney Ashworth and two of their five children, circa 1900 ---------------------------------------According to survivng son Philip, who recently celebrated his 90th birthday in San Diego, in 1907 or 1908 Pinckney and Sylva separated, and Mr. Ashworth "went south"; he died in Fort Worth, Texas in 1928 after remarrying. Sylva Ashworth was left to raise her four children and manage the family farm near Eagle, in Cass County, Nebraska. At about the same time she developed severe health problems, including some combination of "valvular heart trouble," "diabetes," "dropsy" and "cystic tumors." She would relate to grandson Carl S. Cleveland Jr. that the diabetes had produced severe ulcerations on her legs, which she kept wrapped in gauze. Many years later she would recall the foul odor that these ulcerations produced, and that the toes of one foot had turned purple. Surgeons at the local hospital had decided against amputation, because Mrs. Ashworth was not expected to survive more than 3 or 4 months with or without the operation. Resigned to her fate, Sylva divided her farm among family members and arranged for her children's care after her death. Her sister Lucy suggested that she seek the assistance of some new kind of healer, a Dr. Olson (perhaps Charles N. Olson, D.C., a Palmer graduate) who practiced some previously unheard of profession in western Nebraska, possibly near North Platte (Ashworth, 1991). Sylva responded: "What on earth is a chiropractor?" However, with nothing to lose for trying, she rented several rooms for herself and her children within walking distance of Olson's clinic. The chiropractor advised her of "problems in the mid-dorsal spine" (Cleveland, 1991), and began a regimen of twice daily adjustments. His rationale was that this area of the spine innervated the pancreas, which was believed to have something to do with diabetes. Sylva learned to conduct her own urinalyses, and began to note improvement. Her urine gradually became clearer, the leg ulcers began to heal, and her toes began to "pinken up" (Cleveland, 1991). Her recovery was thorough: she apparently never suffered the effects of diabetes again, and ate whatever she pleased. ---------------------------------------Figure 3. Sylva, circa 1910, a new DC ---------------------------------------Mrs. Ashworth was inspired by her own recovery to devote her life to chiropractic. She mortgaged her 80 acre farm in order to raise funds, and moved herself and at least two of her four children to Davenport, Iowa. College transcripts reveal her enrollment at the Palmer School of Chiropractic (PSC) on May 6, 1909; she earned her doctorate in chiropractic on May 31, 1910. At the age of 35 the future "GRANDMA of CHIROPRACTIC" began her professional career; a legend was about to begin (see Table 1). ------------------------------Table 1 about here ------------------------------Dr. Ashworth immediately returned to Nebraska with her family, established her practice in Lincoln and began to assist in organizing the profession in the state. Pioneer Nebraska chiropractor "Daddy" Walsh (1924) reported that the "N.C.A. of Nebraska" held its first meeting at Dr. Ashworth's clinic on June, 1912. On August 4, 1913 the annual meeting of the "Nebraska Chiropractic Association" was held at her office at 401 South 14th Street, Lincoln, and she was elected to the board of directors. She is also remembered as an incorporator (on August 18, 1915) of the Nebraska Chiropractic Association. ----------------------------------Figure 4: D.D. Palmer, from 1910 Adjuster ----------------------------------Dr. Ashworth was acquainted with D.D. Palmer, and had him introduced by Mayor Frank Zehrung of Lincoln when Palmer made a public presentation, apparently in Lincoln. On August 20, 1913, Sylva Ashworth, D.C. was in Davenport, Iowa for the PSC lyceum (college homecoming), at which time Palmer was supposedly struck by an automobile driven by his son, B.J., during a parade through the city. According to grandson Carl Cleveland Jr.: "B.J. did not hit D.D. Palmer with the automobile....because she said she was there....and that she testified or told BJ, and she says that the old man jumped, and the car did not hit him at all, that he just jumped out of the way and lost his balance and fell. And, she helped him up" (Cleveland, 1991). Her account essentially agrees with that of Frank W. Elliott, D.C., registrar of the PSC and a friend to both generations of Palmers. As early as 1914 a pattern of charitable services by Dr. Ashworth was apparent. Her adjustive care for death row inmates of the Nebraska penitentiary in Lincoln was remembered in newspaper clippings 25 years later, and by Nebraska chiropractor Ray M. Stover who began his practice in the state in 1928. Sylva's grandson recalls that she visited the "prison in Lincoln at least once a week, maybe more, even though she was busy with her office" (Cleveland, 1991). Her youngest son, Phillip would drive her as she made her rounds to the penitentiary and to patients in the community. Carl Cleveland Jr., then about age 5, often accompanied Dr. Ashworth on her prison visits, and recalls the affection the prisoners felt for his grandmother's generosity. Stover (1991) recalls Dr. Ashworth's concern for the prisoners' and condemned men's spiritual growth, and Sylva noted her satisfaction with a growing prisoner caseload in a letter to B.J. Palmer. Some of the citizens of Lincoln, however, considered these mercy visits decidedly "un-lady-like" (Cleveland, 1991). --------------------------------Figure 6: Sylva, circa 1920 (age 45) --------------------------------S.L. Ashworth was apparently unconcerned about negative local opinions. She owned one of the first automobiles in Lancaster County, and irritated her neighbors by scaring their horses; women were not supposed to be able to drive. The family recalls that "She drove fast, extremely fast, and she had powerful cars....an ordinary car wouldn't do....her first car was a lemon yellow car with black fenders" (Cleveland, 1991). She also purchased an airplane, but was talked out of flying by her family. Son-inlaw Carl S. Cleveland suggested: "You've been flying low for years in your Buick you ought to be satisfied with that" (Cleveland, 1991). Sylva was a "liberated" woman and independent thinker in the days before women's suffrage. (The twentieth amendment to the U.S. constitution, which granted women the right to vote, did not take effect until 1920). She was also one of the first women ever to take an active, official role in national party politics when, in 1924, she was elected "Alternate Delegate at Large" for Nebraska to the Democratic National Convention in New York City. Sylva served on the reception committee which notified Charles Bryan (brother of William Jennings Bryan of national political notoriety) of his nomination for Vice-President. She would remain active in business and political circles on the local, state and national levels throughout her career (see Table 2). ------------------------------Table 2 about here ------------------------------Sylva was quite the entrepreneur. She hired a management service to oversee her farm while she practiced and invested in the Nebokar Oil & Gas Syndicate of Blackwell, Oklahoma and Omaha, Nebraska, through which she became a partner in oil drilling ventures in Holbrook, Arizona and Oklahoma. She also owned real estate in Ontario, Panama City and Lynn Haven, Florida, Long Beach, California and Los Angeles. In 1923 she was warmly welcomed to membership in the Lincoln Ad Club, and assured that women had always been welcome in the Club (i.e., even before women's suffrage). She would eventually become a highly respected member and executive of the Lincoln Business & Professional Women's Club (LB&PWC). In a 1941 letter to her daughter she noted that even several nurse members had voted for her in her successful campaign for the presidency of the LB&PWC. However, the family recalls her as gullible in some of her business dealings, particularly her oil investments. Sylva's business interests were balanced by her generosity. She believed that the more she gave away, the more she would receive in return: "Cast your bread upon the waters, etc." (Ashworth, 1920). Her generosity to chiropractic organizations and institutions included donations to the PSC, Cleveland College, the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College, the International Congress of Chiropractic, and the Chiropractic Research Foundation (predecessor of today's FCER/Foundation for Chiropractic Education and Research). In a confidential letter to daughter Ruth, Dr. Ashworth estimated that her donations to chiropractic causes over a 34 year period exceeded $50,000. Dr. Ashworth's independence of thought and behavior were also reflected in her practice of chiropractic. She was warned repeatedly to stay out of the University of Nebraska's college infirmary. However, "she would push doctors and nurses aside and say 'I have patients in here who have asked for my service, and I'm going to go in and adjust them,' and she did! It's kind of hard to stop a woman with a made up mind....she was a doctor when it wasn't fashionable for ladies to be doctors" (Cleveland, 1991). Speculatively, her outspokenness on behalf of chiropractic may also have been a stimulus to G.H. Simmons, M.D., who practiced in Lincoln, was a leader of the American Medical Association from 1899 through 1925, and mentor to the chiropractors' arch-nemesis, Morris Fishbein, M.D., editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association. The Ashworth/Simmons connection has not been confirmed,