Osteopathy
See also: OsteopathyStill believed that osteopathy was a necessary discovery, because the current medical practices of his day often caused significant harm and conventional medicine had failed to shed light on the etiology and effective treatment of disease. At the time A.T. Still practiced as a physician, medications, surgery, and other traditional therapeutic regimens often caused more harm than good. Some of the medicines commonly given to patients during this time were arsenic, castor oil, whiskey, and opium. Additionally, unsanitary surgical practices often resulted in more deaths than cures.
Dr. Still sought to reform existing 19th century medical practices. Still investigated alternative treatments, such as hydropathy, diet, bonesetting, and magnetic healing. Still found appeal in the relatively tame side effects of those modalities, and imagined that someday "rational medical therapy" would consist of manipulation of the musculoskeletal system, surgery, and very sparingly used drugs, including anesthetics, antiseptics, and antidotes. He invented the name "osteopathy" by blending two Greek roots osteon- for bone and-pathos for suffering in order to communicate his theory that disease and physiologic dysfunction were etiologically grounded in a disordered musculoskeletal system. Thus, by diagnosing and treating the musculoskeletal system, he believed that physicians could treat a variety of diseases and spare patients the negative side-effects of drugs.
A.T. Still founded the first school of osteopathy based on this new approach to medicine - the school was called the American School of Osteopathy (now A.T. Still University) in Kirksville, Missouri in 1892.
Still was also one of the first physicians to promote the idea of preventive medicine and the philosophy that physicians should focus on treating the disease rather than just the symptoms.
Still defined osteopathy as:
| “ | that science which consists of such exact, exhaustive, and verifiable knowledge of the structure and function of the human mechanism, anatomical, physiological and psychological, including the chemistry and physics of its known elements, as has made discoverable certain organic laws and remedial resources, within the body itself, by which nature under the scientific treatment peculiar to osteopathic practice, apart from all ordinary methods of extraneous, artificial, or medicinal stimulation, and in harmonious accord with its own mechanical principles, molecular activities, and metabolic processes, may recover from displacements, disorganizations, derangements, and consequent disease, and regained its normal equilibrium of form and function in health and strength. | ” |
In a 1907 interview by the Topeka Daily Capital newspaper, A.T. Still's son, Charles Still, D.O., described his father's philosophy that the body would operate smoothly into old age, if properly maintained and that every living organism possessed the ability to produce all the necessary chemicals and materials to cure itself of ailments.
Read more about this topic: Andrew Taylor Still