He was accepted to Medical School at the University of Iowa that same year. He broke off his medical studies after three years to work with the founder of chiropractic, Daniel D. Palmer, at Palmer School of Chiropractic. Smith moved to Chicago a couple of years later and opened an own chiropractic clinic. At the same time Smith broke his connection with Palmer and his theory about mechanical disorder in the spinal column as only cause for discomfort. Oakley Smith had another theory and he would soon get support for his idéas. Under this period of time Smith researched and took part of a number of dissections, during which he made huge progress that lead to his theory regarding connective tissue, and how this could be the cause for pain and reduced function. During a study tour in Bohemia (today’s Czechia) he came in contact with manual treatment methods within the popular traditions.

Smith became fascinated and while back in the USA he looked up bohemian emigrants to learn more about their manual forms of treatment. The things he learnt would have a crucial importance to the development of naprapathy. Smith amongst other authors published a book named “A Textbook of Modernized Chiropractic” in 1906. The book described what Smith later came to call naprapathy*. Smith founded the first school within naprapathy in 1907, Oakley Smith School of Naprapathy in Chicago. Thus was the foundation of naprapathy laid, both as phenomena and course of treatment. 1949 an additional school started in Chicago, the National College of Naprapathy. When the schools were merged into one in 1971 the name changed to Chicago National College of Naprapathy (today: National College of Naprapathic Medicine). *The word naprapathy has its origin in the czech word “napravit” which means rectify, and the greek word “pathos” which means suffering. As its wholeness, naprapathy means “to rectify the cause of suffering”.