Philip Bayliss, St Albans Osteopathy, Christchurch - Principals of Osteopathy and History of Osteopathy

As a young frontiersman, Andrew became very expert with the rifle and hunted deer, turkeys, eagles, hawks, wild geese, wildcats, and foxes. He was a good judge of dogs, and quoted as an authority on the subject. When he was 18 Andrew wanted to enlist in the army to fight in the war between the United States and Mexico, but Abram refused to let him go, saying that he was too young. In 1949 Andrew married Mary Margaret Vaughn. Andrew’s primary occupation was farming. He ploughed 60 acres of land and planted corn. On 4th July1849 a hail storm destroyed the crop. It is a disaster and the family is financially decimated. Andrew taught at the local school that autumn and winter for $15 per month and began a "formal" two year apprenticeship with his father to study as a medical doctor. Their first children are born in 1849 and 1852. In 1853 Andrew served in John Fremont’s expedition that set off from Kansas City to try to find a central route across the Rocky Mountains for the transcontinental railroad. The expedition was forced by bad weather to turn back in Utah. Soon after Andrews' return, the extended Still family moved to the Kansas territory, where Abram was stationed as a missionary to the Shawnee Indians. Andrew helped his father and brothers with the family farm caring for the crops and livestock and assisted Abram in both his ministerial and medical duties as well as assisting in his religious revival camp meetings. Andrew dug up bones from Indian burial grounds and studied them in depth, giving him a detailed knowledge of osteology (the anatomy of bones). Andrew and his family had their family home in Kansas for the next 22 years. In April 1855 Andrew had conversations with his friend and mentor Major James B. Abbott began to question medical tradition and think about "new" methods of healing. It is thought that at this time he began his study of Magnetic Healing. From 1855 to 1857 Andrew studies mechanics and machinery under the tutelage of Boston educated Professor Sole.

From 1857 to 1861 Andrew was active in the anti-slavery movement in Kansas. He participated in the "Bleeding Kansas" battles (between the pro and anti-slavery citizens) until Kansas was admitted into the Union as a free state in 1861. He was friends and allies with the famous anti-slavery leaders John Brown and Jim Lane. In 1859 Mary Margaret died two months after giving birth. The baby had lived only five days. She had previously lost another child in infancy. She left Andrew with four children. In 1860, Andrew married his second wife, Mary Elvira Turner. They were together until she passed away 50 years later. Andrew then attended the Kansas City School of Physicians and Surgeons, but he never completed the course of study due his disagreement with the curriculum. From 1861-1864 Andrew fought in the Civil War on the side of the Union Army. He served his entire military career in Kansas in several different militia units. His earliest rank was that of a sergeant and he was listed as a hospital steward, who functioned as a pharmacist and surgeon’s assistant. After his first militia unit was disbanded, he organized a new militia, was promoted to Captain and ultimately achieved the rank of Major. His unit was involved in the Battle of Westport (also known as the Gettysburg of the West). In his autobiography he reported only his combat duty as an infantry officer; he never served in the Civil War as a physician or surgeon. In the Battle of Westport, Andrew suffered a ruptured inguinal hernia. His injury was so severe that he was no longer able to do the heavy work/labour required of a farmer and, out of necessity, devoted more time to his duties as a physician. Andrew and his wife Mary Elvira repeatedly petitioned the US government for Andrew to receive a pension based upon injury received in the Civil War (the inguinal hernia). However, because the Kansas Militia was not officially sworn in to the Union Army, his pension requests were denied. In the years following the Civil War the Still family suffered many financial hardships, with Andrews’ earnings barely keeping pace with his expenses.

After he returned from the war, Andrew’s life was shaken when, within two weeks, three of his children from his first marriage died of meningitis, and two weeks later a child from his second marriage died of pneumonia. In 1865 Andrew re-established his medical practice. In 1867 Abram died at age 71 of pneumonia. Andrew was very close to his father and this death was a great loss. Soon after, Andrew began to study Spiritualism. Three healthy children were born, and Andrew was able to scrape a living from farming and his medical practice. In 1873 Andrew was seriously ill with a lung infection for three months. After his recovery another child was born. In 1874 Andrew started to practice Magnetic Healing and began exploring bone-setting. It is thought that he initially learned bone setting from the medicine men of the Shawnee Indians.

Andrew had an epiphany on 22nd June 1874. He saw the medicine of the future as a naturalistic, vitalistic, holistic and drugless approach to health and disease, based on the concept that man is triune being - a unity of body, spirit and soul, possessing "God’s pharmacy" within to heal itself. He viewed disease as an effect of the various derangements from the anatomical perfection intended by God, the Divine Architect, believing that a change in structure, such as subluxed bones or muscle contractures, affected the flow of fluids to organs, and therefore their function, leading to disease. In the autumn of that year, Andrew performed the first osteopath treatment, treating for free a poor boy he saw in the street with his lower body covered with blood. In Andrews’ own words: “My first case was of bloody flux (haemorrhagic gastroenteritis) in a little boy of about four summers. I didn't know what caused the flux, except that it affected young and old alike and was common in summer. I knew that a person had a spinal cord, but really I knew little, if anything, of its use. I had read in anatomy that the upper portion of the body was supplied with motor nerves from the front side of the spinal cord, and that the back side of the cord gave off the sensory nerves, but that gave no very great clue to what to do for flux. I placed my hand on the back of the little fellow, in the region of the lumbar, which was very warm, even hot, while the abdomen was cold. I began work at the base of the brain, and thought by pressure and rubbing I could push some of the hot to the cold places. While so doing I found rigid and loose places in the muscles and ligaments of the whole spine, while the lumbar was in a very congested condition. I worked for a few minutes on that philosophy, and told the mother to report to me the next day, and if I could do anything more for her boy I would cheerfully do so. She came early next morning with the news that her child was well. Flux was in a large percent of the families of Macon. My home at that time was still in Baldwin, Kansas, and I was only visiting in Macon. The lady whose child I had cured brought many people with their sick children to me for treatment. As nearly as I can remember, I had seventeen severe cases of flux in a few days, and cured them all without drugs.”

Soon after, Andrew was publicly "read out" (or formally removed) from the Methodist Church by the minister in Baldwin, Kansas. Because of his "laying on of hands", Andrew was accused of trying to emulate Jesus Christ and was labelled an agent of the devil. His practice dropped off rapidly. He was socially and professionally ostracized, became financially destitute, and was ultimately forced to move his family to Macon, Missouri. Shortly after, Andrew moved alone to Kirksville and after three months sent for his family to join him. Kirksville at that time had a population of 6000. In 1876, he was stricken with typhoid and for six months was confined to bed. From 1880 until 1886 Andrew worked as an itinerate physician traveling from town to town in rural Missouri, advertising himself a "Lightning Bone Setter". He was away from his wife and children for months at a time. In 1885 Andrew coined the term osteopathy from the Greek "osteon" for bone and "pathos" for suffering. From 1886 Andrew found that work was so plentiful that he could remain at one place and let patients come to him. So he mostly gave up traveling and remained primarily in Kirksville, Missouri. He continued to refine osteopathy. Although he and others doubted whether osteopathy could be taught, he made several attempts to train others. Andrew hoped that his two sons would carry on his work through the establishment of a school of osteopathy, so he waited for their return from service in the army. During this time patients flocked from all over America for his treatment. Hotels were built in the town of Kirksville to house the many patients who arrived daily for help.

On 1st November 1892 he opened the American School of Osteopathy (later renamed the Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine, and now part of the AT Still University). This first class of eleven students consisted of former patients, family friends and five of Andrew’s children. He admitted five women to the first class, at a time when they were barred from US medical schools. Andrew wished his graduates to be general practitioners, caring for patients with a wide variety of medical complaints, able to perform surgery, and deliver babies. The state of Missouri was willing to grant him a charter for awarding the MD degree, but he remained dissatisfied with the limitations of conventional medicine and instead chose to retain the distinction of the DO degree. An infirmary was built in 1895 and in that year Andrew and his students had performed thirty thousand osteopathic treatments. Andrew sanctioned the use of some types of drugs: anaesthetics, antidotes and antiseptics, which he believed had been demonstrated to be effective. By the late 1890’s his school, infirmary and new surgical hospital were increasingly successful both academically and financially. Several railroad companies advertised extra train services to Kirksville to accommodate the 400 people travelling to Kirksville every day. By 1902 the ASO was graduating 300 students a year. Andrew Taylor Still died on 12th December 1917 from the effects of a stroke he had sustained three years earlier.

In the 20th century, osteopathy in the United States moved closer to mainstream medicine in its philosophy and scope of practice. The curriculum at US osteopathic schools is now identical to its allopathic counterpart with the exception that D.O.s learn some osteopathic philosophy and manipulation, though they are used by only a small minority of graduates in actual practice. Today there are approximately 63,000 osteopathic physicians in the U.S. yet only about 500 osteopaths practice the original healing art.

Some of the Major Influences on Andrew Taylor Still

The death of four of his children from infectious diseases within a single month of 1864, while Still with his medical training could do nothing to help them, shook his faith in medicine. Common medical treatments at that time included vomiting, purging, bloodletting and heroic doses of opium, morphine, arsenic, and calomel (a mercury based drug which rotted the teeth, gums, and cheeks of the patient). They often caused more harm than good. Louis Pasteur had only discovered that microorganisms cause infectious diseases in 1861, and it wasn't until 1865 that Joseph Lister invented anti-sepsis.

Still was a natural born healer who revealed to one of his students toward the end of his life that he was able to see the human aura or energy field. He was influenced by the intellectual and philosophical movements making their way across America during his life time such as transcendentalism, phrenology, natural hygiene, homoeopathy, magnetic healing, spiritualism and mesmerism and also by Hippocrates's doctrine where all illness was seen as the result of an imbalance in the body of four humours. The therapeutic approach was based on "the healing power of nature" ("vis medicatrix naturae"), the body containing within itself the power to re-balance the four humours and heal itself. He studied highly complex philosophical treatises such as those written by Herbert Spencer, the founder of evolutionary theory and in later years was a Freemason. Still, an amateur inventor, was fascinated with machines. He built and opened a steam powered sawmill in the mid 1850’s. He invented a mowing machine to harvest wheat. In 1871 he invented an improved butter churn. Between 1904-06, while in his 70’s, he invented a modern antipollution device that allows for smokeless combustion in coal burning furnaces; in 1910 he was issued a patent for the device. He had an excellent knowledge of anatomy and was fascinated by human mechanics. He maintained that an alteration in structure (the musculoskeletal system) through injury can result in a change in the function of an internal organ and hence disease. Likewise, a diseased internal organ will result in an alteration in the musculoskeletal system. An osteopath, by his or her intimate knowledge of living anatomy could recognize, even on subtle levels, these deviations from normal and by the application of various manual manoeuvres restore normal structure and hence normal function, and so assist the inherent self-healing powers of the body. Still eventually accepted the "germ theory of disease" believing that while bacteria or viruses might be the causative agent of infectious disease, musculoskeletal dysfunctions may predispose towards physiologic derangement that would place the person in a state of lowered resistance, permitting infection to gain a foothold in the body and expressing itself as manifest disease. By correcting the musculoskeletal derangement, the body's natural defences would then be more effectively expended to address the disease.

Osteopathy in Europe and The Commonwealth