Major B. DeJarnette and the Origins of Sacro Occipital Technique
A boiler explosion in Detroit changed the course of chiropractic history. Major Bertrand De Jarnette was not on a straight path toward chiropractic when his early engineering career was interrupted by a severe workplace injury. Yet that event helped shape the questions he would spend his life trying to answer.
De Jarnette became known as the founder and developer of Sacro Occipital Technique, often called SOT. His work drew from three major areas of study: engineering, osteopathy, and chiropractic. That mix gave him an unusual way of looking at the body. He was interested not only in where pain appeared, but in how structure, motion, and physiology might relate to one another.
This post is informational only and does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment guidance.
An engineering mind met a clinical problem
De Jarnette was born on December 23, 1899, and raised in Nebraska. After high school, he accepted a scholarship as an apprentice in experimental engineering. In 1918, he moved to Detroit to work as a design engineer at Timken Detroit Axle Co.
Engineering trained him to look for patterns, forces, stress points, and systems that fail under load. Those habits later became part of how he approached chiropractic care. He did not view the body as a loose collection of parts. He studied it as a connected system.
His life took a sharp turn after a boiler explosion at the company. The accident killed five of his coworkers and left De Jarnette severely injured. Unable to continue his engineering work, he sought osteopathic care.
That care included spinal and cranial therapies. According to the source article, he was treated personally by Dr. Garner Sutherland, D.O., who is widely associated with the development of cranial osteopathy. This experience exposed De Jarnette to a different kind of structural thinking, one focused on the relationship between the spine, cranium, and function.
Osteopathy became the next step
While receiving care, De Jarnette decided to study osteopathy. He attended Dearborn College of Osteopathy in Elgin, Illinois, and graduated in 1922.
The college had been founded by Dr. Charles H. Murray, D.O., in 1912. It began in Murray’s home, built around his osteopathic textbooks and supported by faculty assistants. For De Jarnette, this training added another layer to his growing model of the body.
His education was unusual because it joined practical engineering with hands-on osteopathic study. That combination mattered. Engineering gave him a mechanical framework. Osteopathy gave him exposure to spinal and cranial therapy concepts. Chiropractic would later give him the professional field in which he developed and taught his ideas.
After graduating from Dearborn, De Jarnette returned to Nebraska. In Lincoln, he met Dr. N.B. Crabtree, president of the Nebraska College of Chiropractic. Crabtree encouraged him to continue his education and earn a chiropractic degree. De Jarnette completed his D.C. degree in 1924.
His Nebraska practice became a testing ground
In June 1925, De Jarnette opened his practice in Nebraska City, Nebraska. His office was located above The Farmers Bank. From that practice, he continued to refine his questions about chiropractic therapy and patient care.
The image is easy to picture: a clinician with engineering training, osteopathic experience, and a chiropractic practice, watching patients closely for repeating patterns. De Jarnette wanted to find a way to read a patient’s presentation more functionally. He was not only asking, “Where is the pain?” He was asking, “What pattern is the body showing?”
That question became central to his work.
Over time, he identified recurring biomechanical dysfunctions and related indicators. These observations became the foundation for his category system, a key feature of SOT. The system reportedly began with 21 categories and was later narrowed to three basic categories.
The category system gave SOT its structure
De Jarnette’s categories were designed to organize clinical observations into practical patterns. In the SOT framework, each category relates to a different area of concern.
Category 1
This category relates to cerebrospinal fluid, often shortened to CSF, and the body’s ability to circulate it. In De Jarnette’s model, this category reflected dysfunction connected to that physiological process.
Category 2
This category relates to instability or hypermobility of the sacroiliac joint complex. In simpler terms, it focused on a foundational pelvic fault, especially involving the SI joints.
Category 3
This category relates to what the source article describes as “our limitation of matter,” especially lumbar disc herniation with associated sciatica. In the SOT model, this category addressed a more material or structural limitation.
The category system helped turn a large set of observations into a more usable clinical approach. For De Jarnette, classification was not an abstract exercise. It was a way to improve decision-making during patient care.
Why De Jarnette’s path still matters
De Jarnette’s life is a reminder that health care methods often grow from personal experience, formal study, careful observation, and years of revision. He did not develop his work from one discipline alone. He built it from several.
His background helps explain why SOT has a distinctive shape. It reflects:
Engineering logic, with attention to mechanics and systems
Osteopathic influence, especially spinal and cranial concepts
Chiropractic practice, where his ideas were refined over decades
Over his chiropractic career, De Jarnette authored more than 135 volumes on his technique. That output shows how committed he was to studying, explaining, and expanding the method he developed.
The origins of SOT are not just a historical footnote. They show how one practitioner used adversity, education, and repeated clinical observation to build a structured approach to care. Major B. De Jarnette’s story helps place the technique in context: not as a sudden invention, but as the result of a lifetime of asking how the body’s structure and function connect.
Citation
Hagen, Chad, DC. “Major B. De Jarnette, D.O., D.C. Founder and Developer of Sacro Occipital Technique.”
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