2024 marks the 150th anniversary of the creation of Osteopathy by the first osteopath Andrew Taylor Still. He was an American physician and surgeon, author and inventor. He set up a hospital and a teaching university in Kirksville, Missouri, called the American School of Osteopathy (now A.T. Still University) in 1874.
As with many pioneers, his story is an interesting one: his father was a Methodist minister and Doctor. He was apprenticed under his father and went on to become a surgeon in the American civil war.
Life was hard in many ways back then; there were no antibiotics which weren't discovered for a further 50 years so infectious disease was the number one killer. People commonly died of the flu, post operative infection and pneumonia. Physicians used many different treatment approaches including the use of arsenic, mercury, opium and alcohol for “cures”.
Still, himself, lost his wife, and four children including an adopted child who died of meningitis; this loss and grief became the catalyst for him to learn all he could about the human body and try to understand why a disease would kill some people, but others would successfully heal themselves.
He was somewhat obsessed with the body’s anatomy and the relationship between its structure and how function could be influenced. Initially, he used manual manipulation to support the body's immune system.
Still’s hands on techniques proved more efficient than many others in dealing with infection in this pre-antibiotic era.
By 1874 he felt he had defined a science out of all of his studying and creation of manual techniques.He called it Osteopathy from Osteon (the bone) and pathos (suffering). His developed theory was that disease and altered function were able to be influenced via the musculoskeletal system and that this was a 2 way relationship.
We are now seeing this in modern medicine which, more than ever, is using the body’s own systems to alleviate disease, for example priming the body’s own immune system to identify cancer cells and target them specifically.
Still saw Osteopathy within medicine as he imagined a therapy consisting of manipulation of the musculoskeletal system, surgery when required and the sparing use of drugs including anaesthetics, antiseptics and antidotes.
Osteopathy came to England in 1934, by which time we have the use of antibiotics, so medicine was far more effective when treating infectious disease.
Osteopaths in England are not Doctors of Osteopathy like they are in America and so its role within the healthcare system is within the treatment of musculoskeletal complaints but the core understanding of how Osteopathy can help systemic health remains.
Happy Birthday Osteopathy!
