Andrew Taylor Still, MD
Osteopathic medicine was founded in 1874 by Dr. Andrew Still (1828-1917), a medical doctor who lived in Missouri. He discovered the significance of living anatomy in health and disease. Dr. Still realized that optimal health is possible only when all of the tissues and cells of the body function together in harmonious motion. Disease can have its beginnings in even a slight anatomical deviation from normal and Dr. Still found that he had the ability to put his hands on patients, change their physiology and restore health. He named his innovative approach “Osteopathy” and began a new profession separate from his MD profession. This included his discoveries of how to use one’s hands to interact with a patient’s body and help restore more normal function to all structures, including tissues, bones, organs, arteries, cells, etc.
Today, some osteopathic physicians like Dr. Spector continue to use their hands to treat their patients in this same tradition, along with other medical modalities and an ability to apply full medical knowledge to each patient’s problem. DO’s today specialize in every field of medicine (e.g. surgery, cardiology, neurology, family medicine, etc.), and many no longer use this traditional form of osteopathic manual medicine.
Dr. Still understood that the human body is composed of many parts, but they are intimately related as a functional whole, and that the body has self-regulatory and self-healing mechanisms that can be used to help people get well. More than a hundred and forty years ago, Dr. Still realized that the human being is more than just a physical body. He envisioned a totally new medical system that acknowledges the relationships of the body, mind, emotions and spirit.
At the age of ten, young Andrew Still suffered from frequent headaches with nausea. He constructed a rope swing between two trees, eight to ten inches off the ground. He lay down using the rope with a blanket over it for a swinging pillow. He wrote, “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 my headache all gone.” He continued to use this ‘treatment’ successfully every time he had a headache.
Twenty years later Dr. Still considered his ‘rope swing treatment’ of headaches, and realized ... “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...I have worked from the days of a child...to obtain a more thorough knowledge of the workings of the machinery of life, in producing ease and health.”
As a practicing physician Dr. Still diligently researched and developed osteopathy. He developed a very practical way of treating people using just his hands, to change physiology and restore health.
In the late 1800s none of today's miracle drugs, such as antibiotics, were available. Dr. Still looked first to nature's own ability to heal and found a way to access this ability within the body. Still saw this self-correcting potential as a cornerstone of his osteopathic philosophy. When combined with appropriate use of present day medical therapeutics, osteopathy offers a profound contribution to the practice of medicine.
Some quotes from A.T. Still, MD, founder of Osteopathic Medicine:
“To find health should be the object of the doctor. Anyone can find disease…”
“Osteopaths are the champions of natural law...”
“An Osteopath reasons from his knowledge of anatomy. He compares the work of the abnormal body with the work of the normal body…”
“You as Osteopathic machinists can go no further than to adjust the abnormal condition, in which you find the afflicted. Nature will do the rest...”
“Health holds dominion over the body by laws as immutable as the laws of gravity…”
“We look at the body in health as meaning perfection and harmony, not in one part, but in the whole…”
“In Nature we look for good machines in form and action…To obtain good results we must blend ourselves with and travel in harmony with Nature’s truths.”