“I found mechanical cause for disordered functioning, or poor work of the head, neck, thorax, abdomen, pelvis or extremities. I adjusted the bony framework and secured such good results that I was encouraged to keep on and on until now I can truthfully say that I am satisfied that osteopathy is the natural way by which all of the diseases to which the human family is heir can be relieved, and a large majority of them cured.“Osteopathy is based on perfection of nature’s work. When all parts of the human body are in line we have health. When they are not the effect is disease. The work of the osteopath is to adjust the body from the abnormal to normal; then the abnormal condition gives place to the normal and health is the result of the normal condition.”
Autobiography of A.T. Still
“You wonder what Osteopathy is; you look in the medical dictionary and find as its definition “bone disease”. That is a grave mistake. Osteopathy is a compound of two words, osteon, meaning bone, pathos, and pathine, to suffer. I reasoned that the bone, “osteon,” was the starting point from which I was to ascertain the cause of pathological conditions, and so I combined the “Osteo” with the “pathy” and had as a result, Osteopathy.”
Autobiography of A.T. Still;
Osteopathy: A medical therapy that emphasizes manipulative techniques for correcting somatic abnormalities thought to cause disease and inhibit recovery.
American Heritage Dictionary;
Osteopathy: 1. any disease of a bone. 2. a system of therapy founded by Andrew Taylor Still (1828-1917) and based on the theory that the body is capable of making its own remedies against disease and other toxic conditions when it is in normal structural relationship and has favorable environmental conditions and adequate nutrition. It utilizes generally accepted physical, medicinal, and surgical methods of diagnosis and therapy, while placing chief emphasis on the importance of normal body mechanics and manipulative methods of detecting and correcting faulty structure.
Dorland’s Medical Dictionary;
SOME HISTORY OF OSTEOPATHY
August, 1828 A.T. Still born in Jonesville, Virginia, son of a Methodist missionary physician.
About, 1838 Stills first lesson in osteopathy. “Thus I lay stretched on my back, with my neck across the rope. Soon I became easy and went to sleep, got up in a little while with the headache gone.” “I followed that treatment for twenty years before the wedge of reason reached my brain, and I could see that I had suspended the action of the great occipital nerves, and given harmony to the flow of the arterial blood to and through the veins, and ease was the effect.”
October, 1864 Osteopathy In Danger; “During the hottest period of the fight a musket-ball passed through the lapels of my vest, carrying away a pair of gloves I had stuck in the bosom of it. Another mini-ball passed through the back of my coat just above the button, making an entry and exit about six inches apart. Had the rebels known how close they were to shooting Osteopathy, perhaps they would not have been quite so careless.”
Spring, 1864 “It was when I stood gazing upon three member of my family,-two of my own children and one an adopted child,-all dead from the disease, spinal meningitis, that I propounded to myself the serious questions “In sickness has God left man in a world of guessing? Guess what is the matter? What to give and guess the result? and when dead, guess where he goes?” I decided that God was not a guessing God, but a God of truth. And all his works, spiritual and material, are harmonious. His law of animal life is absolute. So wise a God had certainly placed the remedy within the material house in which the spirit of life dwells.”
June 22nd, 1874 “Like a burst of sunshine the whole truth dawned on my mind, that I was gradually approaching a science by study, research, and observation that would be a great benefit to the world.”
“This year I began an extended study of the drive-wheels, pinions, cups, arms, and shafts of human life, with their forces, muscles, their origin, and insertion; nerves, their origin and supply; blood supply from and to the heart; how and where the motor-nerves received their power and motion; how the sensory nerves acted in their functions, voluntary and involuntary nerves in performing their duties, the source of their supply, and the work done in health, in the obstructing parts in the economy of life; all this study awake a new interest in me. I believed that something abnormal could be found in some of the nerve divisions which would tolerate a temporary or permanent suspension of the blood either in arteries or veins, and cause disease.
“With this thought in view I began to ask myself, What is fever? Is it an effect, or is it a being, as commonly described by medical authors? I concluded it was only an effect, and on that line I have experimented and proven the position I then took to be a truth, wonderfully sustained by nature responding every time in the affirmative. I have concluded after twenty-five years of close observation and experimenting that there is no such disease as fever or rheumatism, sciatica, gout, colic, liver disease, nettle-rash, or croup, on to the end of the list, they do not exist as diseases. All these separate or combined are only effects. The cause can be found and does exist in the limited or excited action of the nerves which control the fluids of part or the whole of the body. It appears perfectly reasonable to any person born above the condition of an idiot, who has familiarized himself with anatomy and its working with the machinery of life, that all diseases are mere effects, the cause being partial or complete failure of the nerves to properly conduct the fluids of life.
“On this stone I have built and sustained Osteopathy for twenty-five years. Day by day the evidences grow stronger and stronger that this philosophy is correct.”
September, 1892 American School of Osteopathy enters its first class of 17 students.
SOME PHILOSOPHY
Method of Reasoning: We reason for needed knowledge only, and should try to start out with as many known facts as possible. If we would reason on diseases of the organs of the head, neck, abdomen or pelvis, we must first know where these organs are, how and from what arteries the eye, ear, or tongue is fed.
The Osteopath an Artist: We teach you anatomy in all its branches, that you may be able to have and keep a living picture before your mind all the time, so you can see all joints, ligaments, muscles, glands, arteries, veins, lymphatics, fascia superficial and deep, all organs, how they are fed, what they must do and why they are expected to do a part, and what would follow in case that part was not done well and on time. I feel free to say to my students, keep your minds full of pictures of the normal body all the time, while treating the afflicted.
Principles: You as Osteopathic machinists can go no farther than to adjust the abnormal condition, in which you find the afflicted. Nature will do the rest.
The Practicing Osteopath’s Guide: The Osteopath reasons if he reasons at all, that order and health are inseparable, and that when in order in all parts is found, disease cannot prevail, and if order is complete and disease should be found, there is no use for order. And if order and health are universally one in union, then the doctor cannot usefully, physiologically, or philosophically be guided by any scale of reason, otherwise.
Truths of Nature: If we take man as our object to base the beginning of our reason, we find the association of many elements, which differ in kind to suit the purpose for which they were designed. To us they act, to us they are wisely formed and located for the purpose for which they were designed. Through our five senses we deal with the material body. It has action. That we observe by vision which connects the mind to reason. High above the five senses on the subject of cause or causes of this is motion. By testimony of the witness the mind is connected in a manner by which it can reason on solidity and size. By smell, taste and sound, we make other connections between the chambers of reason and the object we wish to reason upon; and thus our foundation on which all five witnesses are arrayed to the superior principle which is mind.
To find health should be the object of the doctor.
Anyone can find disease.
from: Philosophy of Osteopathy