Editing Osteopathy (section)

==History==
{{See also|Osteopathic medicine in the United States#History|l1=Osteopathic medicine in the United States: History}}
[[File:Andrew Taylor Still 1914.jpg|right|thumb|upright=0.9|Andrew Taylor Still in 1914|alt=Monochrome photograph of Andrew Taylor Still in 1914]]
The practice of osteopathy ({{ety|grc|{{wikt-lang|grc|ὀστέον}} ({{grc-transl|ὀστέον}})|bone||{{wikt-lang|grc|πάθος}} ({{grc-transl|πάθος}})|pain, suffering}}) began in the United States in 1874. The profession was founded by [[Andrew Taylor Still]], a 19th-century American physician (MD), [[American Civil War|Civil War]] surgeon, and Kansas territorial and state legislator.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://cdm.sos.mo.gov/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=/atsu&CISOPTR=693&REC=1 |title=''Medical Registration for Macon County, MO as of March 27, 1874'', Missouri Digital Heritage, Secretary of State of Missouri |access-date=13 November 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131029230519/http://cdm.sos.mo.gov/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=%2Fatsu&CISOPTR=693&REC=1|archive-date=29 October 2013 |url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://cdm.sos.mo.gov/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/atsu&CISOPTR=759&CISOBOX=1&REC=2 |title=Medical registration for Adair County, MO dated 28 July 1883 |publisher=Missouri Digital Heritage, Secretary of State of Missouri |access-date=27 April 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131029225308/http://cdm.sos.mo.gov/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=%2Fatsu&CISOPTR=759&CISOBOX=1&REC=2 |archive-date=29 October 2013 |url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://cdm.sos.mo.gov/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=/atsu&CISOPTR=685&REC=2 |title=''Six Survivors of First Free State Legislature in Kansas, Topeka Daily Capital'', Missouri's Digital Heritage, Secretary of State of Missouri |publisher=Cdm.sos.mo.gov |access-date=13 November 2011 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20120708032727/http://cdm.sos.mo.gov/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=/atsu&CISOPTR=685&REC=2 |archive-date=8 July 2012 |url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://cdm.sos.mo.gov/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=/atsu&CISOPTR=670&REC=1 |title=Charles E. Still (son) – Letters to Edith Mellor, DO. Missouri's Digital Heritage, Secretary of State of Missouri |publisher=Cdm.sos.mo.gov |access-date=13 November 2011 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20120707144304/http://cdm.sos.mo.gov/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=/atsu&CISOPTR=670&REC=1 |archive-date=7 July 2012 |url-status=dead}}</ref> He lived near [[Baldwin City, Kansas]], during the [[American Civil War]] and it was there that he founded the practice of osteopathy.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.lasr.net/pages/city.php?Baldwin%20City&Kansas&City_ID=KS0301001&VA=Y&Attraction_ID=KS0301001a017 |title=Baldwin City, Kansas |quote=Among Free State leaders was Andrew T. Still, founder of osteopathy, whose theory of healing developed here.}}</ref> Still claimed that human illness was rooted in problems with the [[musculoskeletal]] system, and that osteopathic manipulations could solve these problems by harnessing the body's own self-repairing potential.<ref name=ident>{{cite journal |pmid=10179479 |year=1998 |last1=Guglielmo |first1=WJ |title=Are D.O.s losing their unique identity? |volume=75 |issue=8 |pages=200–2, 207–10, 213–4 |journal=Medical Economics}}</ref> Still's patients were forbidden from treatment by conventional medicine, as well as from other practices such as drinking alcohol.<ref name=paradox /> These practices derive from the belief, common in the early 19th century among proponents of [[alternative medicine]], that the body's natural state tends toward health and inherently contains the capacity to battle any illness.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |title=Osteopathic Athletic Health Care |last=McKone |first=W. Llewellyn |date=1 January 1997 |publisher=Springer US |isbn=978-0-412-59090-0|pages=1–9 |language=en |doi=10.1007/978-1-4899-3067-5_1 |chapter=History of osteopathy}}</ref> This was opposed to orthodox practitioners, who held that intervention by a physician was necessary to restore health in the patient. Still established the basis for osteopathy, and the division between alternative medicine and traditional medicine had already been a major conflict for decades.<ref>{{Cite book |title=Nature Cures: The History of Alternative Medicine in America |last=Whorton |first=James C. |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]], Inc |year=2002 |isbn=978-0-19-514071-2 |location=New York |pages=[https://archive.org/details/naturecureshisto00whor/page/8 8] |url=https://archive.org/details/naturecureshisto00whor/page/8}}</ref>

The foundations of this divergence may be traced back to the mid-18th century when advances in [[physiology]] began to localize the causes and nature of diseases to specific organs and tissues. Doctors began shifting their focus from the patient to the internal state of the body, resulting in an issue labeled as the problem of the "vanishing patient".<ref name=":1">{{Cite book |title=Nature Cures: The History of Alternative Medicine in America |last=Whorton |first=James C. |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |year=2002 |isbn=978-0-19-514071-2 |location=New York |pages=[https://archive.org/details/naturecureshisto00whor/page/15 15] |url=https://archive.org/details/naturecureshisto00whor/page/15}}</ref> A stronger movement towards experimental and scientific medicine was then developed. In the perspective of the DO physicians, the sympathy and holism that were integral to medicine in the past were left behind. [[Heroic medicine]] became the convention for treating patients, with aggressive practices like [[bloodletting]] and prescribing chemicals such as mercury, becoming the forefront in therapeutics.<ref>{{Cite book |title=Nature Cures: The History of Alternative Medicine in America |last=Whorton |first=James C. |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |year=2002 |isbn=978-0-19-514071-2 |location=New York |pages=[https://archive.org/details/naturecureshisto00whor/page/4 4] |url=https://archive.org/details/naturecureshisto00whor/page/4}}</ref> Alternative medicine had its beginnings in the early 19th century, when gentler practices in comparison to heroic medicine began to emerge. As each side sought to defend its practice, a schism began to present itself in the medical marketplace, with both practitioners attempting to discredit the other. The osteopathic physicians—those who are now referred to as DOs—argued that the non-osteopathic physicians had an overly mechanistic approach to treating patients, treated the symptoms of disease instead of the original causes, and were blind to the harm they were causing their patients. Other practitioners had a similar argument, labeling osteopathic medicine as unfounded, passive, and dangerous to a disease-afflicted patient.<ref>{{Cite book |title=Natures Cures:The History of Alternative Medicine in America |last=Whorton |first=James C. |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |year=2002 |isbn=978-0-19-514071-2 |location=New York |pages=[https://archive.org/details/naturecureshisto00whor/page/18 18] |url=https://archive.org/details/naturecureshisto00whor/page/18}}</ref> This was the medical environment that pervaded throughout the 19th century, and the setting Still entered when he began developing his idea of osteopathy.

After experiencing the loss of his wife and three daughters to [[spinal meningitis]] and noting that the current orthodox medical system could not save them, Still may have been prompted to shape his reformist attitudes towards conventional medicine.<ref name=":2" /> Still set out to reform the orthodox medical scene and establish a practice that did not so readily resort to drugs, [[purgatives]], and harshly invasive therapeutics to treat a person suffering from ailment,<ref name=":0" /> similar to the mindset of the irregulars in the early 19th century. Thought to have been influenced by spiritualist figures such as [[Andrew Jackson Davis]] and ideas of [[Magnetic healing|magnetic and electrical healing]], Still began practicing manipulative procedures that intended to restore harmony in the body.<ref name=":2">{{Cite journal |last=Gevitz |first=Norman |date=1 January 2014 |title=A Degree of Difference: The Origins of Osteopathy and First Use of the "DO" Designation |journal=The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association |volume=114 |issue=1 |pages=30–40 |doi=10.7556/jaoa.2014.005 |pmid=24384971 |issn=0098-6151 |doi-access=free}}</ref> Over the course of the next twenty five years, Still attracted support for his medical philosophy that disapproved of orthodox medicine, and shaped his philosophy for osteopathy. Components included the idea that structure and function are interrelated and the importance of each piece of the body in the harmonious function of its whole.

Still sought to establish a new medical school that could produce physicians trained under this philosophy, and be prepared to compete against the orthodox physicians. He established the American School of Osteopathy on 20 May 1892, in Kirksville, Missouri, with twenty-one students in the first class.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Peter |first=Wagner |date=11 April 2011 |title=History of Osteopathy |publisher=William E. Laupus Health Sciences Library and the East Carolina University Department of Bioethics & Interdisciplinary Studies |hdl=10342/3694 |url=http://hdl.handle.net/10342/3694}}</ref> Still described the foundations of osteopathy in his book "The Philosophy and Mechanical Principles of Osteopathy" in 1892.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://archive.org/details/philosophymechan00stil |title=The philosophy and mechanical principles of osteopathy (full text) |first=Andrew Taylor |last=Still |place=Kansas City, Mo. |publisher=Hudson-Kimberly Pub. Co. |year=1892}} This edition 1902; copyright 1892. Chapters: Preface; Introduction; I. Important Studies; II. Some Substances of the Body; III. Divisions of the Body; IV. Head, Face, and Scalp; Chapter V. The Neck; VI. The Thorax; VII. The Diaphragm; VIII. The Abdomen; IX. The Pelvis; X. Fevers; XI. Biogen; XII. Smallpox; XIII. Obesity; XIV. Ear-Wax and Its Uses; XV. Convulsions; XVI. Obstetrics. Link to read online, or download in many formats.</ref> He named his new school of medicine "osteopathy", reasoning that "the bone, [[osteon]], was the starting point from which [he] was to ascertain the cause of pathological conditions".<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.meridianinstitute.com/eamt/files/webster1/webcont.html#HOW%20I%20CAME%20TO%20ORIGINATE%20OSTEOPATHY |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101205145639/http://meridianinstitute.com/eamt/files/webster1/webcont.html#HOW%20I%20CAME%20TO%20ORIGINATE%20OSTEOPATHY |archive-date=5 December 2010 |website=Early American Manual Therapy |title=Concerning Osteopathy |first=George V. |last=Webster |year=1919 |url-status=dead}}</ref> He would eventually claim that he could "shake a child and stop scarlet fever, croup, diphtheria, and cure whooping cough in three days by a wring of its neck."<ref name="Carroll2015">{{cite web |title=Osteopathy |last=Carroll |first=R.T. |date=27 November 2015 |access-date=28 April 2019 |url=http://skepdic.com/osteopathy.html}}</ref>

When the state of Missouri granted the right to award the MD degree,<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.nj.gov/highereducation/AGMEC/osteopathic_med_school_accreditation_standards.pdf |title=Commission on Osteopathic College Accreditation |publisher=State of New Jersey |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080908041004/http://www.nj.gov/highereducation/AGMEC/osteopathic_med_school_accreditation_standards.pdf |archive-date=8 September 2008}}</ref> he remained dissatisfied with the limitations of conventional medicine and instead chose to retain the distinction of the [[Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine|DO degree]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://history.osteopathic.org/educate.shtml |title=Osteopathic Virtual Museum |access-date=13 November 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120316164329/http://history.osteopathic.org/educate.shtml |archive-date=16 March 2012}}</ref> In the early 20th century, osteopaths across the United States sought to establish law that would legitimize their medical degree to the standard of the modern medic.<ref name="Booth">{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tO8yAQAAMAAJ&q=legislature&pg=PR9 |title=History of Osteopathy: And Twentieth-century Medical Practice |last=Booth |first=Emmons Rutledge |date=1 January 1905 |publisher=Press of Jennings and Graham |language=en |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref> The processes were arduous, and not without conflict. In some states, it took years for the bills to be passed. Osteopaths were often ridiculed and in some cases arrested,<ref name="Booth" /> but in each state, osteopaths managed to achieve the legal acknowledgement and action they set out to pursue. In 1898 the American Institute of Osteopathy started the ''[[Journal of Osteopathy]]'' and by that time four states recognized osteopathy as a profession.<ref>{{cite journal |title=General Notices |journal=Popular Science Monthly |date=Mar 1898 |page=710 |url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/20879097 |access-date=14 May 2013}}</ref>