1986 — The Digest of Chiropractic Economics reported that “Chiropractic loses its most eloquent speaker: Dr. Joseph Janse, 1909-1985,” who passed away on December 18, 1985, at age 76.

Dr. Joseph Janse

Born in Holland in 1909, he earned his Doctor of Drugless Therapeutics degree from the National College in 1937, and doctorates in chiropractic and naturopathy the following year. By 1939 he had been appointed as one of four deans at his alma mater, and in 1945 was named president of the College.

By this time, the National College of Chiropractic (NCC) had reorganized as a nonprofit institution, and Janse assisted the National Chiropractic Association’s director of education, John J. Nugent, DC, in the formation of the NCA Council of Education. Janse would serve as president and secretary of the Council for many years.

The author of several books and innumerable papers, his orientation to clinical practice evolved to a scientific epistemology. During the four decades of his leadership of the NCC, the College established the profession’s preeminent scientific periodical, the Journal of Manipulative & Physiological Therapeutics, and achieved both professional and regional accreditation.

Janse moved the school from its longtime site in Chicago to Lombard, Ill., in 1963. As an educator, he was acknowledged as a gifted radiologist and anatomist. Truly one of the greats in the history of chiropractic, he was admired within and beyond his political/philosophical camp.