Dr Andrew Tailer Still, the founder of
osteopathy, was a man endowed with imagination, rare
vision and perseverance. He was born on August 6, 1828,
to a simple, hardy German farmer who was a physician by
training and a missionary by choice. His mother Martha,
was Scottish. Andrew was born in a remote village in
Virginia, U.S.A . He was sturdy and strong and lived
close to nature. He was fond of watching different
animals. He would catch hares and squirrels and dissect
them to find out the type of organs they had.
Andrew’s parents wanted him to become a Methodist
minister. He wanted to be a physician, probably inspired
by the visits he made with his father, assisting him on
call of duty. He describes an incident in his
autobiography. He was ten years old when he got a severe
headache. He was in agony. He took a rope and made a
swing between two trees, about 6-8 inches above the
ground, put a small pillow over it, placed his neck on
it, and lay flat on the ground with his head hanging over
the swing. He was reasonably comfortable that way. He
went to sleep and got up twenty minutes later minus the
headache. He knew nothing about the anatomy of the neck
and he never imagined that this simple action with the
swing could have stopped the headache. He used the same
method till he was twenty years old. At this juncture he
reasoned out his initial discovery. ‘I could see
that I had suspended the action of the great occipital
nerves, and could give harmony to the flow of the
arterial blood to and through the veins, and ease
effect.’
Still joined the College of Physicians. When his wife
Mary Vaugh died in 1859, he remarried and moved to an
Indian settlement in Eastern Kansas. Later he joined the
Army Medical Corps as a surgeon. At end of the war, in
October1864, he was discharged from military service with
the rank of Major. He resumed private practice. Medical
science, at the time, was not very advanced and doctors
made widespread use of mercurial preparations, irritants
and alcohol. In 1875, a writer in British medical journal
advised diabetics to take mineral acids, bark and opium
preparations. In the same issue Dr. Conrad said that
venereal diseases had some power to modify the eruptions
of smallpox. Skin cancer was treated with arsenical
paste, enuresis with strychnine. In the light of modern
medicine this was a foolish and dangerous trend.
At this juncture Still was hit by a great tragedy. Three
of his sons died of spinal meningitis. He watched
helplessly while his beloved children were snatched away
by the cruel hands of Fate. This was the turning point in
his life. His suspicion about the inadequacy of medical
science was confirmed. He says in his autobiography:
‘It was when I stood gazing at three members of my
family all dead from spinal meningitis that I asked
myself a serious question. In sickness had God left man
stranded in a world of guessing? To guess what the matter
was? To guess what to give and guess what the result
would be? I decided then that God was not a guessing God
but a God of truth. All his words, spiritual or material,
were harmonious. So wise a God had certainly provided
remedies for all illnesses.’
Still’s own experience of curing his severe headache
and his great personal tragedy drove him relentlessly
towards a deeper study of Man. His anguish led him to the
conviction that something must be found to enable the
body to heal itself in accordance with the law of nature.
He chose Baker University to present his new idea. His
father and brothers had donated 480 acres of land to the
university. When he approached the authorities with his
new idea he was looked upon with raised eyebrows and his
request to present his paper was turned down. In spite of
the generosity of his family, his reputation as a good
doctor, his career in the army and as a legislator, the
university doors were closed to him.
His theory that the body possesses the power for
self-healing and self-maintenance was not acceptable.
Doctors continued to give patients opium and whisky,
which was like adding poison to the body already loaded
with toxins. Sir William Oster, a noted physician, said,
‘He who takes medicine must get well twice, once
form the disease he has and once from the medicines he
has taken.’ Even this blow was not enough to make
him deviate from his chosen path. He returned to Missouri
and with greater determination went on developing his own
theory. He maintained that the body was a complete unit
and it was not possible for one part of the unit to be
sick without affecting other parts. He believed in
treating the body as a whole. He believed that the
body’s self-mechanism should be recognised and
normalised, and this would do the rest of the job of
prevention and treatment.
To understand disease we must know what health is and any
deviation from it should be recognised. The
muscular-skeletal system (constituting muscles, bones,
ligaments and fascia) forms sixty per cent of the body
mass. Unfortunately this part is most neglected. Any
alteration or disorder in this systems of the body. The
effect is mainly due to the nerve irritation which causes
a muscle spasm, hence resulting in a change in blood
supply and the flow of lymph.
Dr. Still was hopeful and enthusiastic about his theories
in spite of the criticism against him. In those days, to
study human bones was a sin. Yet he went ahead and
exhumed bodies from the shallow graves. He collected
human bones and studied them in secrecy. The intricate
mechanism of the human body fascinated and surprised him.
He was curious about the sacro-iliac joint described in
textbooks as a joint which does not move. He
proved that the books were wrong. (Only recently have
medical authorities arrived at the conclusion that the
sacro-iliac joint has movement) Then he examined the
spine which is a great combination of flexibility and
strength. Intricate bones preserve and protect the spinal
chord and its branches. The nerves passing through the
joints reach the muscles, joints and different organs.
The spine has a disc between each joint which acts as a
shock absorber.
Dr Still began to wonder why so many bones were so
intricately interwoven, performing such delicate
movements, and supporting the structure of the body.
Would a change in the mechanism affect the body? If it
was true that the change did affect the body, then he had
found the cause. He said, ‘A thousand experiments
were made with bones until I became quite fam iliar with
the bony structure . I spent much time in the study of
anatomy, physiology, chemistry and mineralogy. During the
winters of 1878 and 1879 I was called to my old home in
Kansas to treat a member of the family, whom I had
doctored for ten years prior to my moving to Missouri. I
treated partially by drugs, as was done in those days,
but also gave osteopathic treatment and the patient got
well.’
This was the start of the experiments on men. Dr Still
started his new practice in Kirksville, Missouri, a small
mid-west town. His critics did not give him any
importance; instead, they looked upon him as a poor
idealist doctor or an insane man. This was also the time
of great strides in medical science, when Lister was
working on the theory of antisepsis, Pasteur on germ
theory, and Virchow on physiology. The discovery of
diphtheria antitoxins and the X-ray, however, came into
use only years later.
Dr Still’s theories stood the test of time. He
experimented by fitting a stout bench-like table covered
with leather in his office. It was long enough for a
person to lie on, with leather in his office. It was long
enough for a person to lie on, but not wide enough. The
patients who came to him were placed on the table. After
being physically examined, parts of their bodies were
bent in different directions. Sensitive fingers would run
over their spines; his hands would pause at tender areas;
there would be quick movements and the pain was gone.
They could not understand why a doctor would only push
and pull to treat instead of administering a pill or a
bottle of medicine. The relief experienced, however,
began attracting a horde of patients. The news spread
fast. What part do nerves play in the symptom of a disease?
Using bones as a leverage, how can one influence them?
What role do arteries and veins play in the cure of a
disease? Dr.Still concluded that blood supply could
be normalised a great deal by manipulative manoeuvres
which relaxed the muscles and thus affected the free flow
of blood. He declared, ‘The rule of the artery is
supreme’. He was sure that the free flow of blood
played a great role in overcoming disease.
Dr Still’s fame spread gradually. At no time,
however, did he think his discovery to be complete. With
the co-operation of his sons and doctors who were
attracted towards his science, he founded a new branch of
medical treatment which came to be known as Osteopathic
Medicine. Dr Still planned to open a college of
osteopathy. Assistance came in an astonishing way. Dr
William Smith of Edinburgh, Scotland, was so impressed by
Dr.Still that he offered to stay and teach anatomy in
exchange for lessons in manipulative movements. The
college at Kirksville, Missouri, opened in November 1892,
and was given legal recognition.
From the beginning, the main aim of the college was to
improve medical practice. It was not a ‘non-medical
school’. Later it grew in stature and included all
the arts and sciences of medical practice. Kirksville
became a centre of feverish acitivity. Patients flocked
from far and near in big numbers; a few stayed on after
getting cured to continue their studies. The college grew
far beyond the hopes and imagination of Dr Still. New
colleges were opened. Osteopathy was growing fast in USA
and UK. Dr Still passed his last few years sitting in the
porch of his house on a hill overlooking the little town
of Kirksville, where he could see the college building
and hospital. A great experimenter, teacher and
philosopher, he died on November 12,1917. By then, more
than 5,000 osteopathic physicians were practising in USA
and other countires.
Still expounded that Man, a remarkable creation of God,
was a self-sufficient, self-maintaining machine. The
machine could run smoothly and look after itself.
Osteopathy recognised this great self-healing and
self-maintaining power of the man-machine. It is not
surprising that his theories evoked controversy. He was a
complex man and his writings were difficult to
understand. He could demonstrate and do things on his
own, but could not put his ideas into writing in an
organised form. His lectures used to be followed by
demonstrations of his treatment on patients, without
explaining much about what he could find and how he could
put it right. A lot has been done since his time. Now
there is a slow but definite recognition of Stills’s
theories. He says in his philosophy of Osteopathy that
his great desire was to give a head start to a philosophy
that could be a guide for the future. ‘Great
development in osteopathy today is the true emergence of
his said philosophy’.
After Dr Still, osteopathy has produced many giants. They
have contributed to its refinement and development. Today
with many osteopathic hospitals, colleges and activities
of different osteopathic associations in different
countries, this branch of medicine is taking giant
strides. Manipulative therapy, as medical science prefers
to call it today, is becoming popular with medical men.
Many doctors who suffer from pain themselves and
ultimately get cured by manipulative therapy, try to
learn a few techniques and apply them on their patients
with astonishing results.
Manipulative treatment is part of the therapy as
mentioned in orthopaedic text books. Osteopathy and
chiropractic (where the same aim is achieved by using a
slightly different technique) manipulation have come to
be accepted as effective techniques of manipulative
treatment. The truth, however, is that not everybody can
be efficient and proficient in these techniques. A long
time needs to be spent on self-training. Also there is
the difficulty of finding an appropriate teacher.
Techniques cannot be learnt by just studying books.
Manipulation should be treated on par with other medical
procedures. Who can deny the fact that even surgery saw
black days beginning with the hands of barbers before the
invention of anaesthesia!
Currently osteopathy is practised the most in the United
States, its birth place. In UK, the profession had a
relatively slower development. A few osteopaths from
American colleges have settled in Australia. The
Scandinavian countries are fast heading towards providing
manipulative care to the public. There are quite a few
osteopaths in France. It was Dr.J.B.Mannel (1877-1957)
who first introduced gentle vertebral manipulation
without anaesthesia within the domain of traditional
medicine.
Recently the world Association of Natural Medicine came
into existence. It includes osteopathy, chiropractic,
acupuncture, hydrotherapy, naturopathy, yoga, hypnotism,
meditation, physiotherapy and homoeopathy. Its head
office is in Switzerland and a world conference is held
there every year.
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