Osteopathy,
A method by which diseases of the human body are treated without medicines.
In 1874
Dr. A. T. Still, of
Baldwin, Kan., discovered what he declared a more natural system of healing than that universally accepted.
He held that inasmuch as the human body was so perfectly constructed it ought without any external aid excepting food to protect itself
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against disease, and further reasoned that “a natural flow of blood is health, and disease is the effect of local or general disturbance of blood.”
After various experiments he became convinced that the different organs of the body depend for their health on nerve centres which are principally located along the spine.
These he declared could be controlled and stimulated by certain finger manipulations, which would not only cause the blood to circulate freely, but would produce an equal distribution of the nerve forces.
By this treatment the diseased part would be readjusted and would have “perfect freedom of motion of all the fluids, forces, and substances pertaining to life, thus reestablishing a condition known as health.”
Since the promulgation of this theory a number of institutions for the training of practitioners have been founded in various sections of the country, principally in the
West, where several States have placed osteopathy on the same legal basis as other schools of medicine.
