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OSTEOPATHY 
 
 The Science of Healing 
 by Adjustment 
 
 FIFTH EDITION 
 
 
 PERCY H. WOOD ALL, M. D., D. O. 
 

 JUL 2 018 
 
PREFACE 
 
 There is much misinformation concerning 
 Osteopathy. It has been confused in the public 
 mind with every conceivable form of treatment. An 
 effort is here made to give an authoritative, simple, 
 non-technical statement of its principles; to show 
 that they are original, distinctive and unique, and 
 to explain their application to the treatment of 
 diseases. 
 
 As a graduate and former practitioner of medi- 
 cine, I have endeavored to present the claims of 
 Osteopathy to recognition as a school of healing, 
 conservatively and fairly. We ask an unprejudiced 
 judgment. 
 
 Indebtedness is acknowledged to Macfie's "The 
 Romance of Medicine," Gorton's "The History 
 of Medicine," Wilder's "History of Medicine," 
 Boerick and Anshutz's "The Elements of Homoeo- 
 pathic Theory, Materia Medica, Practice and 
 Pharmacy," Deason's "Physiology — General and 
 Osteopathic." Especial thanks are due to Dr. F. P. 
 Millard. 
 
 Psrcy H. Woodau,, M. D., D. O. 
 
PUBLISHED BY 
 
 AMERICAN OSTEOPATHIC ASSOCIATION 
 
 AT ORANGE, N. J. 
 
INTRODUCTORY 
 The Evolution of the Healing Art 
 
 The practice of the Healing Art was born 
 of man's necessity, and every age, in varying 
 degree, has claimed its ministrations. It is 
 as old as human nature and doubtless 
 originated from man's instinctive efforts to 
 relieve his own suffering. Skulls from the 
 neolithic period with unmistakable evidences 
 of trepination afford abundant proof that 
 this severe operation was attempted as 
 remotelv as the earlv stone age. 
 
 Although legendary history relates that 
 centuries before the culmination of Egyptian 
 civilization, medicine was crudely cultivated 
 by certain Chinese kings, yet medicine as an 
 Art and Science seems most probably to have 
 originated with the Egyptians. King Athosis 
 who lived more than 6,000 years ago, is said 
 not only to have acquired an elaborate knowl- 
 edge of medicine but to have written books on 
 anatomy. 
 
 The earliest Egyptian medical practices 
 were religious and consisted mainly of incan- 
 tations. The later evolution of medical treat- 
 ment made use of drugs and herbs, many of 
 which are in use today. Castor oil, squills, 
 turpentine, opium, and lead, trace the ances- 
 
Osteopathy, the Science 
 
 try of their usage to the Egyptian prognos- 
 tics. Free use was made of hair dyes, hair 
 restorers, cosmetics, and even opiated sooth- 
 ing syrups. Five thousand years before 
 Christ dentists filled teeth with gold and 
 surgeons performed difficult operations, 
 with instruments very similar to those in 
 present-day usage. They possessed some 
 knowledge of the circulation of the blood; 
 specialists treated all the different organs 
 and diseases ; physicians wrote prescriptions 
 after the manner of the present century. Nor 
 were they exempt from numerous pre- 
 tenders and empirics, the antecedents of our 
 modern quacks. It was from the Egyptians 
 that Moses doubtless received his marvelous 
 knowledge of hygiene and sanitation, the 
 practice of which entitled him to rank as one 
 of the greatest physicians of history. 
 
 But most human good has an evangelical, 
 or at least mercantile, desire for self-propa- 
 gation, and medicine soon made its way from 
 Egypt into Greece. Aesculapius, the Greek 
 god of medicine, is attributed to the 
 thirteenth century before Christ. His two 
 sons, Machaon and Podilarius, were said by 
 Homer to have been present at the seige of 
 Troy, and Podilarius is said to have been the 
 first physician to practice bleeding. Hygeia, 
 the beautiful daughter of Aesculapius, is the 
 first woman physician recorded among the 
 Greeks. While at this time there were many 
 
of Healing by Adjustment 
 
 superstitious and ridiculous practices, there 
 were also practices of undoubted and per- 
 manent value, gymnastics, massage, poultic- 
 ing, counter-irritation, and baths. 
 
 Although the art of medicine doubtless 
 originated in the valley of the Nile, the land 
 of mystery and silence, it is to ancient Greece, 
 "the land of life and light, of liberty, of 
 heroism, of creative art, industry and litera- 
 ture, of lovers of truth and beauty, ' ' that we 
 must look for the first flush of the dawn of 
 modern medical thought. 
 
 To the celebrated Hippocrates, the "father 
 of medicine,' ' a lineal descendant of Aescula- 
 pius, eighteen generations removed, this 
 development must be attributed. Medicine 
 and medical heroes had slumbered for nearly 
 a thousand years when Hippocrates appear- 
 ed. He was the first to catch a glimpse of the 
 part which that mysterious force called 
 "Nature/ ' plays in the process of cure, and 
 upon this realization that "Nature cures" he 
 laid the foundation of modern medical 
 thought and teaching. Hippocrates was a 
 man of elastic and expansive mind, gifted 
 with marvelously accurate and discriminating 
 powers of observation and description. Some 
 of his descriptions of symptoms and diseases 
 have never been improved upon. His char- 
 acter and ideals were of the highest and 
 after more than two thousand years he 
 remains the ideal physician. Yet his renown 
 
 7 
 
Osteopathy, the Science 
 
 was greater as a surgeon than as a physician. 
 
 Following in the wake of Hippocrates and 
 benefiting by his blazing of the trail, comes 
 an array of lesser lights ushering in events 
 important and pregnant with lasting influence 
 upon the evolution of the Healing Art. From 
 the mass of determining factors time permits 
 us to select only the most important. 
 
 Many noted physicians of antiquity have 
 been women. One of the most distinguished 
 was at the same time one of the most 
 infamous, Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt. 
 History ascribes to her the authorship of 
 treatises upon the Diseases of Women, but as 
 these manuscripts have been destroyed their 
 professional value is unknown. 
 
 As a great leader in medical thought, 
 chronologically, Galen next assumes promin- 
 ence. Although a Greek by birth, and edu- 
 cated in Alexandria, he made Eome, as the 
 center of the civilized world, the theatre of his 
 activities. He was the first to describe the 
 production of the voice, the function of the 
 kidneys, and to determine many significant 
 facts relative to the nervous system. He 
 remained the oracle of the medical profession 
 for more than fourteen hundred years, and 
 woe to any man who for any reason, dared to 
 dispute his teachings. 
 
 After the death of Galen, which occurred 
 about 200 A. D., the progress of medicine 
 languished for many centuries. The dark 
 
 8 
 
of Healing by Adjustment 
 
 ages were already beginning to cast their 
 sinister shadow over the world. Culture and 
 learning, universally, were in a sad state. 
 Greece was no more, or at best a memory; 
 Eome was unfavorable to the development 
 and growth of science, and Alexandria was 
 declining. In 638 the Mohammedans took 
 Alexandria and burned the greater part of its 
 magnificent library. The avowed reason was 
 that if its books agreed with the Koran they 
 were useless and if they disagreed therewith, 
 they were wicked. Fortunately some of its 
 medical works fell into appreciative hands 
 and the Arabians for several hundred years 
 kept alive the spark of medical knowledge. 
 Although they were first to describe small- 
 pox and measles, the Arabians added but 
 little to the evolution of the Healing Art. 
 They merely kept alive what had been 
 attained. In the early part of the ninth 
 century, at Salerno, Italy, was established the 
 first medical college in Europe. During the 
 eleventh century, Arabia suffered a period of 
 decline and the church became the nursery of 
 learning, though there was but little science 
 and less effort at scientific discovery. 
 Diseases were generally ascribed to astral 
 influences. In the fourteenth century, the 
 study of anatomy was revived. Anatomical 
 illustrations of dissections were now made 
 upon metal or wooden plates from which 
 copies could be made upon the printing press. 
 
 9 
 
Osteopathy, the Science 
 
 A general ide'a' of the status of medical knowl- 
 edge of the fifteenth century is afforded in the 
 fact that the plague which visited Europe at 
 this time was variously ascribed by the 
 medical profession to " filthy habitations and 
 habits, gross errors of diet, impure water — 
 and the Jews, a perpetual plague to 
 Christians. ' ' The stars were still held by 
 the highest authority to be responsible for 
 much sickness. 
 
 The sixteenth century was an age of con- 
 siderable progress. Two very remarkable 
 men appear during this century, Paracelsus 
 and Vesalius, who left many positive im- 
 pressions upon the development of medicine. 
 Paracelsus dared to dispute the teachings of 
 the medical fathers and to use the dialect of 
 the common people in his lectures. For this 
 offense of "profaning and vulgarizing the 
 medical art by making its mysteries known to 
 the laity," and for his independence in oppos- 
 ing the fallacies of the profession he was 
 denounced and persecuted and finally treach- 
 erously murdered by assassins. The deed is 
 said to have been instigated by his jealous 
 colleagues. Vesalius, in his zeal for dissect- 
 ing material, is said to have fought with 
 hungry dogs for bones in the cemeteries of 
 Paris, and to have stolen a corpse from a 
 gibbet. He wrote a book on anatomy as he 
 had seen it with his own eyes. As the book 
 was a contradiction of the accepted writings 
 
 10 
 
of Healing by Adjustment 
 
 of Galen, Vesalius met everywhere with the 
 most bitter, bigoted and unrelenting opposi- 
 tion. 
 
 During this period the surgeons were the 
 barbers, the horse-shoers and even the 
 cobblers and tinkers. Surgical operations 
 were crude, cruel and but little more to be 
 desired than death. A French barber- 
 surgeon, Ambrose Pare 7 , introduced the use 
 of soothing dressings for wounds, to displace 
 the former practice of pouring them full of 
 boiling oil. He also began to tie arteries 
 after amputations, instead of plunging the 
 stump into boiling pitch. Yet +hese humane 
 and common sense innovations brought upon 
 him the bitter hatred of his professional 
 brethren, although they greatly increased his 
 popularity with the laity. 
 
 We now approach one of the most illus- 
 trious names and one of the most important 
 discoveries in the annals of medicine, Wil- 
 liam Harvey, and his discovery of the true 
 cause and nature of the circulation of the 
 blood. Notwithstanding that in the earliest 
 Egyptian medical documents there is a clear 
 reference to a movement of the blood to and 
 from the heart, and that Herophilus, in the 
 third century B. C, by dissection of the living 
 human subject knew of the circulation of the 
 blood, the elasticity of the arteries and the 
 nature of the pulse, yet the discovery of the 
 circulation of the blood as we now know it is 
 
 11 
 
Osteopathy, the Science 
 
 accredited to Harvey. Although he wrote 
 logically, learnedly and scientifically and his 
 arguments were indisputable, Hume says that 
 "no physician over forty years of age ever 
 accepted Harvey's theory.' ' It is also said 
 of him, "he fell mightily in his practice — and 
 all the physitians were against his opinion 
 and envied him." 
 
 In the year 1661, the microscope, which in 
 the medical world is now indispensable, was 
 discovered by Malpighi. This discovery 
 brought upon him the severe disapproval of 
 his associates who declared that "the study 
 of microscopic anatomy was averse to the 
 true interests of medical practice." 
 
 Edward Jenner, the next illustrious 
 pioneer, is honored by "regular" medicine 
 as the one who introduced and established 
 vaccination against small-pox. They have 
 now made vaccination compulsory wherever 
 they can, but in the beginning they heaped 
 upon the practice all the abuse and ridicule 
 possible. They declared that it was not only 
 useless but harmful, and that vaccinated chil- 
 dren "became cow-visaged and bellowed like 
 bulls." 
 
 In the year 1800, with the discovery of 
 nitrous oxide or laughing gas and its power 
 to produce insensibility to pain, came the 
 dawn of a new era in surgery. The culmina- 
 tion of the use came about in 1844. Ether 
 was used the next year, and chloroform the 
 
 12 
 
of Healing by Adjustment 
 
 year following. The use of anaesthetics was 
 strongly opposed at first by the clergy, the 
 laity, and by many physicians. The first use 
 of anaesthetics, it must be remembered, how- 
 ever, was by no means so modern as this, for 
 the surgeons of antiquity used drugs to pro- 
 duce sleep during operations. 
 
 The perfection of the compound microscope 
 in 1830, opened up to us the universe of cells 
 and germs. Of the composition of the body 
 we hitherto had known comparatively 
 nothing. A prominent authority in the 
 middle of the eighteenth century crudely said, 
 "our bodies are gradually built up of a slimy 
 and gelatinous fluid.' ' The microscope 
 demonstrated that our bodies are common- 
 wealths of cells, and instead of being a little 
 less than the angels we were shown to be but 
 a step higher than God's lowest creatures. 
 We may say to the worm, "thou art my 
 brother and my sister," and to the tubercle 
 bacillus, "thou art my brother Cain." We 
 are not such stuff as dreams are made of, but 
 are of the same physical stuff as the vilest 
 creeping things. The beauty and the beast, 
 the rose and the reptile, the cabbage and the 
 king, the microbe and the man, the fool and 
 the philosopher, are of the same identical 
 material, protoplasm. 
 
 Glimpses of the germ theory appeared in 
 remote times. Tarentius Rusticus wrote two 
 thousand years ago, "if there are any marshy 
 
 13 
 
Osteopathy, the Science 
 
 places, little animals multiply which the eye 
 cannot discern, but which enter the body with 
 the breath through the nose and mouth and 
 cause grave diseases.' ' The first actual 
 bacteria were seen and described by Leeuwen- 
 hock in 1675. The first bacterium of human 
 disease was not discovered until 1863, when 
 Davaine and Eaver discovered the bacterium 
 that causes Anthrax. The names of Pasteur, 
 Lister, Koch and a number of others are 
 prominent in connection with the develop- 
 ment of the germ theory of disease to its 
 present day acceptance. 
 
 We have flattered ourselves that the part 
 played by the mosquito in the transmission 
 of diseases is of recent discovery. This, like 
 many other things which we consider modern, 
 is but another exemplification of theories pro- 
 posed and all but proved in ages gone by. 
 In a Sanskrit work of fourteen hundred years 
 ago, is the statement that the bite of a certain 
 variety of mosquito is followed by "fever, 
 pain in the limbs, goose-skin, vomiting, 
 shivering and an intense feeling of cold." 
 Even the uninitiated will recognize the malar- 
 ial chill from this description. 
 
 Any account of the development of medical 
 theory and practice must be accounted 
 incomplete which neglects the modern trend 
 toward mental therapeutics. In the early 
 seventies, Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy developed 
 a religious and therapeutic movement, called 
 
 14 
 
of Healing by Adjustment 
 
 Christian Science. This movement has 
 presented an important element in the evolu- 
 tion of the Healing Art in that it has caused 
 the medical profession to devote more atten- 
 tion to the mental and psychic causes and 
 features of diseases. 
 
 In the latter part of the eighteenth century, 
 Samuel Hahnemann instituted a new method 
 of administering drugs, called by him 
 Homeopathy. Homeopathy has greatly 
 modified medical practice and has paved the 
 way for what is in fact, drugless healing. 
 
 Finally in 1874, Dr. A. T. Still, by announc- 
 ing that all drugs and chemicals necessary 
 to maintain health are manufactured by the 
 body in its own laboratories, gave to the 
 world osteopathy, the science of Healing by 
 Adjustment, a true system of natural healing. 
 "We are led up to this system of Healing by 
 Adjustment by the foregoing brief recitation 
 of the steps in the evolution of medicine. 
 
 15 
 
OSTEOPATHY 
 
 The Science of Healing 
 by Adjustment 
 
OSTEOPATHY 
 The Science of Healing by Adjustment 
 
 Adjustment was doubtless one of the 
 earliest methods of healing practiced by 
 primitive man. In encounters with wild 
 beasts, in conflicts with his fellow man, and 
 in the accidents incident to his precarious 
 existence, it was natural that he should have 
 received fractures of his bones and disloca- 
 tions of his joints. His dawning reason 
 taught him that these should be set, that is, 
 adjusted. So adjustment can properly claim 
 first place in the beginning of the healing art. 
 
 These first efforts were necessarily crude 
 because a clear knowledge of the anatomy or 
 structure of the body was lacking. As knowl- 
 edge and skill increased, manipulative 
 surgery was born. Its function is to deal 
 with the adjustment of the gross derange- 
 ments of the large joints, neglecting the minor 
 and minute irregularities of these large joints 
 and practically all derangements of the small 
 joints. 
 
 The importance of these minute irregulari- 
 ties in structure was for ages unappreciated. 
 In the early seventies an "old school" 
 physician, for many years a drug practi- 
 
 19 
 
Osteopathy, the Science 
 
 tioner, had lost his last ounce of faith in the 
 therapeutics of drugs. 
 
 The hand of death had struck three of 
 his children, after the best obtainable medical 
 skill had been exhausted. When he found drugs 
 powerless in curing disease, his grief, his 
 despair and his helplessness impelled him to 
 seek a more rational method of treatment. 
 He conceived the idea that the human body 
 was a living mechanism, subject like any 
 other machine to mechanical derangement of 
 its parts and that these derangements, how- 
 ever minute, interfered with the nerve paths 
 and channels through which the vital fluids 
 circulate. This hindered perfect action of 
 the body and either caused or invited disease. 
 He further contended that the human body 
 was endowed by Nature with facilities within 
 itself for manufacturing all the chemicals 
 and drugs necessary for its growth and repair 
 and for the maintenance of health. He 
 reasoned along this line for several years, 
 verifying his theories and perfecting his 
 results until he had fully developed a new 
 system of treating diseases. This "old 
 school" physician was Dr. A. T. Still. He 
 tells the story of his discovery as follows : 
 
 I was born and raised to respect and confide in the 
 remedial power of drugs, but after many years of prac- 
 tice in close conformity to the dictations of the very best 
 medical authors and in consultation with representatives 
 of the various schools, I failed to get from drugs the 
 results hoped for and I was face to face with the evi- 
 
 20 
 
of Healing by Adjustment 
 
 dence that medication was not only untrustworthy but 
 was dangerous. 
 
 The mechanical principles on which osteopathy is 
 based are as old as the universe. I discovered them 
 while I was in Kansas. You can call this discovery 
 accidental or purely philosophical. I was in the practice 
 of medicine and had been for several years. I treated 
 my patients as other doctors did. A part of them got 
 well and a part died. Others, both old and young, got 
 sick and got well without the assistance of the medical 
 doctor. 
 
 As I was an educated engineer of five years school- 
 ing I began to look at the human framework as a 
 machine and to examine all its parts to see if I could find 
 any variation from the truly normal among its journals, 
 belts, pulleys and escape pipes. I began to experiment 
 with man's body as a master mechanic would when he 
 had in his charge any machinery which needed to be 
 kept perfectly adjusted and in line in order to get perfect 
 work. I worked along patiently, faithfully and hope- 
 fully, finding out that the human body was just as liable 
 to strains and variations as a steam engine, and that 
 after correcting the strains and variations health was 
 sure to follow. I was many years philosophizing, com- 
 paring and noticing results which followed taking off 
 strains and pressure. I was surprised to see that fever, 
 congestion and all irregularities gave way, health 
 returned and the results were good and satisfactory. 
 
 I found mechanical causes for disordered functioning, 
 or poor work of the head, neck, thorax, abdomen, pelvis 
 or extremities. I adjusted the bony framework and 
 secured such good results that I was encouraged to keep 
 on and on until now I can truthfully say that I am 
 satisfied that osteopathy is the natural way by which all 
 the diseases to which the human body is heir can be 
 relieved, and a large majority of them cured. 
 
 Osteopathy is based upon the perfection of Nature's 
 work. When all parts of the body are in line we have 
 
 21 
 
Osteopathy, the Science 
 
 health. When they are not the effect Is disease. When 
 the parts are readjusted, diseases give place to health. 
 The work of the osteopath is to ADJUST the body from 
 the abnormal to the normal; then the abnormal condi- 
 tion gives place to the normal and health is the result 
 of the normal condition. 
 
 Man cannot add anything to Nature's perfect work 
 nor improve the functioning of the normal body. Disease 
 is an effect only, and a positive proof that a belt is off, 
 a journal bent, or a cog broken or caught. Man's power 
 to cure is good as far as he has a knowledge of the right 
 or normal position and so far as he has the skill to 
 adjust the bones, muscles and ligaments and give free- 
 dom to nerves, blood, secretions and excretions and no 
 farther. 
 
 Such is the simple story of the discovery 
 of the fundamental principles involved in the 
 science of osteopathy. It shows unmistak- 
 ably that the peculiar, the distinctive, the 
 essential feature of osteopathy is adjustment, 
 adjustment of the structures of the human 
 body. The purpose of an osteopathic exam- 
 ination is to find the maladjustment that is 
 interfering with a free play of Nature's 
 forces. The object of an osteopathic treat- 
 ment is to readjust the deranged parts or 
 conditions so that the natural state of health 
 may be regained. In addition to adjust- 
 ing body structure, osteopathy uses all the 
 natural common-sense measures common to 
 all schools, but drugs as remedies have no 
 place in its practice. The essentials for its 
 successful practice are an intimate knowledge 
 of the structure and function of every part of 
 
 22 
 
of Healing by Adjustment 
 
 the human body, as well as an insight into all 
 that pertains to human diseases. 
 
 Yet, while manipulations are a necessary 
 part of osteopathy they are relatively of 
 minor importance. The matter of prime im- 
 portance is the ability to locate the mal- 
 adjusted part and to interpret its effects. 
 To do this requires the most comprehensive 
 knowledge of all parts of the body and their 
 respective uses, and of the evidences of their 
 derangement. Without this knowledge of 
 structure, function, and disorder, no degree 
 of manipulative skill can make one an 
 osteopathic physician. Merely to be able to 
 manipulate no more makes an osteopath than 
 the ability to cut makes a surgeon. A knowl- 
 edge of when, for what, and how to cut is no 
 more necessary to surgery than a recognition 
 of when, for what and how to manipulate is 
 requisite to osteopathy. 
 
 The osteopathic concept is that while man 
 is a most complex and delicate mechanism, 
 yet he is a being of life and feeling, vastly 
 more than an inanimate machine; and that 
 there are agencies other than maladjustments 
 within his own body that affect his health. 
 It appreciates the part that heredity, environ- 
 ment, habit, thought, over-use and abuse of 
 organs and agencies, play in matters of health 
 and disease. To the correction of these 
 osteopathy devotes as much attention as does 
 any other school of practice. It approves 
 
 23 
 
Osteopathy, the Science 
 
 and makes use of all natural means of healing 
 of demonstrated value, and enjoins the 
 correct observance of all laws of diet, 
 hygiene, sanitation and psychology; in fact, 
 all principles in accord with the natural laws 
 of the human body are inculcated by this 
 comprehensive science. 
 
 Osteopathy has been builded upon the 
 established facts of science. It is not 
 iconoclastic in its nature, but is constructive. 
 It would not, if it could, refute a single 
 established fact. It aims at the unfoldment 
 of all truth in its relation to the cure of 
 diseases. Its mission is to weld into one 
 harmonious whole all that has been proved 
 worthy in the healing art. It is willing to 
 pay homage to and accept the teachings of all 
 who from the earliest times to the present day 
 have done aught to relieve human suffering. 
 It demands that all theories be tried by the 
 standard of truth and efficiency and that all 
 failing to stand this test be rejected. The 
 unrelenting law of evolution should be ap- 
 plied where the unfit and non-utilitarian the- 
 ories must fail, and where the "workable," 
 as William James says, survive and have 
 survival value. 
 
 Osteopathy does honor to the heroes of 
 preventive medicine who have demonstrated 
 the role of the mosquito in malaria and yellow 
 fever, and it has the profoundest respect for 
 those great sanitarians who have changed 
 
 24 
 
of Healing by Adjustment 
 
 Havana from a plague spot to a city of health 
 and beauty, and have made Panama habitable 
 and wholesome. It is grateful to those 
 geniuses of surgery who by their skill and 
 conservatism have added length of days to 
 man's life, and to those physiological 
 chemists who have evolved a rational and 
 helpful system of diet. It voices apprecia- 
 tion of the great minds that have mined into 
 the realms of thought and have revealed the 
 psycho-physiological inter-relation of mind 
 and body. It appreciates the work of all 
 these coadjutors; it makes use of their 
 discoveries and recognizes them as co- 
 laborers in the advancement of the true art 
 and science of healing. 
 
 It remained, however, for Dr. A. T. Still to 
 add to the verities of anatomy the demon- 
 strated truths of physiology and to these the 
 immutable laws of mechanics, and from all 
 these to formulate a system of treatment 
 based upon the known laws of the sciences, 
 and a svstem of treatment that shall endure 
 as long as man has infirmities. This system 
 has for its aim the extinction of disease and 
 adds to all other helpful measures the one 
 neglected, though most important and needful 
 feature, — the care of the structure of the 
 individual. All else may be perfect, but if 
 this perfection of structure be lacking, 
 disease results. Osteopathy teaches that 
 structure is paramount in matters of health ; 
 
 25 
 
Osteopathy, the Science 
 
 and while it does not deny the influence of the 
 mind it does insist npon the greater impor- 
 tance of the physical. Whatever may be the 
 state of mind, whenever nerve impulses are 
 perverted, or the blood stream diverted, or 
 the structure disordered, the function of the 
 part is necessarily deranged. 
 
 Osteopathy would acquaint man with the 
 dignity, the majesty and the divinity of the 
 human body, the perfection and self- 
 sufficiency of God's own handiwork. It 
 teaches that this "temple of the Spirit" is no 
 gross and inert mass of matter, but an ever- 
 growing, ever-expanding, ever-developing 
 prototype of its Maker, endowed with 
 agencies that tend to heal and to perfect. 
 
 A writer, in a recent medical journal, says : 
 "Year after year the doctors have gone on 
 treating symptoms. The study of causes and 
 the knowledge of therapeutics is a lost art. 
 We have been practicing medicine along the 
 lines of palliation." Osteopathy reverses 
 this disparaging practice and demands a 
 search for and a removal of deleterious 
 causes as its unchanging rule. 
 
 Osteopathy flatly repudiates that age-long 
 fallacy that you must poison a sick man 
 in order to make him well. It cannot give 
 credence or sanction to internal administra- 
 tion of drugs for the cure of diseases. It 
 places confidence in the use of drugs as 
 anaesthetics, as antiseptics and as antidotes in 
 
 26 
 
of Healing by Adjustment 
 
 poisoning, but the administration of them 
 internally for purposes of cure is not only 
 useless but positively harmful. Those sub- 
 stances which cannot be appropriated by the 
 body as food can add nothing to bodily 
 strength, vitality or resistance. Even though 
 remedies are not active poisons { which they 
 usually are) they must be eliminated from the 
 body. During disease the eliminating organs 
 are already overworked, and to impose upon 
 them at such time an additional burden is 
 unnecessary and it may be permanently 
 hurtful. 
 
 I The administration of drugs in disease 
 continues as a remnant of the remote past 
 when diseases were thought to be due to 
 demoniac possession, and when the greatest 
 possible disturbance in the sick man's body 
 was deemed the best means of ridding the 
 patient of the offending devil. At first the 
 most disgusting and nauseating remedies 
 were used. The laity, after centuries of 
 suffering, revolted at these, and now more 
 palatable and agreeable compounds are 
 administered. Many laymen, and no incon- 
 siderable number of doctors, still think that a 
 remedy must make the patient very sick in 
 order to make him ultimately well. This 
 conception still pays tribute to the outworn 
 proposition that it requires one last great 
 upheaval to overthrow the disease, or rather 
 cast out the devil. No one can deny that 
 
 27 
 
Osteopathy, the Science 
 
 drugs do modify symptoms or have in many 
 cases afforded relief, but there is always a 
 reaction, a "kick" at the expense of the 
 general vitality. The habits they have 
 caused, the wrecks they have made, more than 
 offset all the good they have done. Osteo- 
 pathy offers a safer, a saner, a more effective, 
 and a better way. 
 
 Osteopathy recognizes surgery as a science, 
 and one that in the last few years has made 
 wonderful progress. When properly em- 
 ployed, surgery is truly osteopathic in its 
 application, and it is taught in the colleges as 
 a part of the system of osteopathy. Osteo- 
 pathy is, however, opposed to the present 
 reckless and unnecessary tendency toward 
 operations, for by its treatment many so- 
 called surgical cases are cured and many 
 operations are prevented. If osteopathy 
 were given first trial, the necessity for opera- 
 tions would be greatly reduced. Surgery 
 might be employed after osteopathy had 
 failed, if it should fail, but from a surgical 
 operation there is no recourse. From the 
 surety of osteopathy we should turn to pre- 
 carious surgery only as a last resort. 
 
 Osteopathy accepts the germ theory of 
 diseases, to a qualified extent. It accepts the 
 dictum of the other schools of healing, 
 "germs cannot live in healthy tissues." 
 While germs may determine the nature of the 
 disease, yet there must be and is, prior to the 
 
 28 
 
of Healing by Adjustment 
 
 germ infection, some agency or first cause 
 that by interference with the normal blood 
 and nerve supply to the affected part has so 
 reduced its vitality or resistance as to make it 
 susceptible to germ invasion. Germs are 
 everywhere. Earth, air, and water are full 
 of them. Our bodies are havens and hot beds 
 for them. To escape them is impossible and 
 if it were not for the natural defences of the 
 body we could not survive an hour. It is only 
 when these defences become weakened that 
 we become susceptible to germ invasion. 
 Normal blood is Nature's own germicide, and 
 germs in the presence of a good circulation of 
 fresh, flowing blood disappear as green scum 
 on the stagnant pool disappears in the pres- 
 ence of fresh, flowing water. In the blood 
 there are bacteriocides to destroy germs, 
 bacteriolysins to dissolve them, agglutinins to 
 retard their movements, antitoxines to neu- 
 tralize their poisons and opsonins to pre- 
 digest them for the white blood cells. 
 
 The appealing reasonableness of the 
 cardinal principles of osteopathy is more 
 fully appreciated by a brief study of the 
 structure of the human body. The skeleton 
 (Fig. 1) is the fundamental structure of the 
 body and bears the same relation to the body 
 that the framework bears to the building or 
 the steel structure to the sky-scraper. It is 
 the keystone of the osteopathic curative 
 arch. Let mechanical disorder occur here 
 
 29 
 
Osteopathy, the Science 
 
 and disturbance at once begins. In this 
 skeleton there are some two hundred bones 
 and from cranium to toes there are as many 
 joints. These joints are capable of motion 
 and wherever there is motion there is the 
 possibility of displacement. It is doubtless 
 true that out of these two hundred bones 
 there is not one, with the exception of some 
 of the bones of the face and the head, that has 
 not at some time been misplaced. By 
 misplacement we do not mean a gross and 
 marked dislocation, apparent to the untrained 
 eye and touch, but merely the slightest 
 derangement in the mechanical order of this 
 framework. 
 
 In Fig. 2 is shown the spinal column, com- 
 monly called the spine. You will notice that 
 it has certain natural curves; these natural 
 curves must be maintained or ill health 
 results. Especial attention is called to the 
 fact that the spinal column is not a single 
 bone, but that it is made up of a number of 
 small bones interconnected by joints. These 
 joints are in intimate connection with the 
 spinal nerves which pass out on either side 
 between the vertebrae ; notice also their con- 
 nection with each other forming a canal which 
 performs the vital function of inclosing the 
 spinal cord (as is shown in Fig 3), the most 
 important avenue of communication between 
 the brain and the organs and tissues of the 
 body. From it the spinal nerves, thirty-one 
 
 30 
 
of Healing by Adjustment 
 
 pairs out of a total of forty-three pairs in the 
 entire body, take their origin. These spinal 
 nerves are connected, in turn, with the sympa- 
 thetic nerves, and by this union the motion, 
 the sensation and the nutrition of every or- 
 gan and tissue of the body are controlled. 
 
 In Fig. 4 is shown a picture of the body cut 
 in half. In this you can observe the spinal 
 nerves as they emerge from the openings 
 between the vertebrae ; notice also their con- 
 nection with the sympathetic nerves and 
 through these with the internal organs and 
 tissues. Beginning in the neck at the highest 
 point you can trace the connections to the 
 nerves of the head, the eyes, the throat, the 
 face, the thyroid gland, the heart and through 
 the pneumogastric nerves to the stomach, the 
 liver and the intestines. Further down are 
 seen the connections with the heart, the lungs, 
 the stomach, the liver, the spleen, the 
 pancreas, the intestines, the pelvic organs, 
 and the lower extremities. 
 
 Much is now said and written about 
 "reflex" disorders. It is a matter of com- 
 mon medical knowledge that a decayed tooth 
 may cause facial neuralgia, or a slight 
 muscular defect about the eye may result in 
 headache, or that slight irritation in the ear 
 may effect nausea and vomiting, or that a 
 diseased vertebra between the shoulders may 
 produce pain in the "pit" of the stomach, 
 or a diseased hip may create a pain in the 
 
 31 
 

 Osteopathy, the Science 
 
 knee or that various internal troubles may 
 cause backache. All these are called " reflex 
 effects.' 9 Thus it is manifest that strains 
 and slight misplacements of these spinal 
 joints may cause deranged action of the 
 tissues and organs in direct nervous connec- 
 tion with them. It is because these numerous 
 spinal joints are in such intimate connection 
 with the spinal nerves, each joint receiving 
 fibres from the adjacent nerves, that the 
 osteopathic physician devotes so much atten- 
 tion to the spine. The slightest derangement 
 in the position of the bones concerned in the 
 formation of these joints causes contraction 
 and congestion of all the soft tissues, and 
 irritation, perhaps inflammation of the joint 
 structures. This irritation is transmitted to 
 the organs to which the nerve supplying the 
 irritated joint is distributed, and these organs 
 become disturbed, as in the familiar cases of 
 bad teeth and facial neuralgia, eye-strain and 
 headache. 
 
 It is an undisputed fact that the large joints 
 of the body, the hip, the shoulder and the 
 knee with their numerous and strong liga- 
 ments and muscular protection, often become 
 dislocated and strained so that their function 
 is impaired. As a resultant the parts supplied 
 by the blood vessels and nerves connected 
 with the joint become greatly impoverished. 
 When one considers that the joints of the 
 spine are less abundantly protected by liga- 
 
 32 
 
'Vert* Was' 
 
 i. vn 
 
 Sacra! vertebra 
 I. -V. 
 
 ;i vorU'b* 
 I. V. 
 
 FIG. 2 
 
FIG. 3. 
 
SPINAL T/ERVE5 
 
 AS THEY ARE PAS5MG 
 
 BETh/EEri VERTEBRAE 
 
 JUGULAR VEW 
 
 THYROlO CI MP 
 
 AORTA 
 
 HEART 
 LliriO 
 
 D1APHRA6/T 
 
 CALL BLADDER 
 
 LIVER 
 
 — OWARY 
 BLADDER 
 
 Courtesy of 
 
 
) f Healing by Adjustment 
 
 nents, that the vertebrae are placed one 
 irectly on top of another, that they must 
 upport the entire weight of the body and are 
 avolved in its every movement; then when 
 ne considers the many jars, falls, wrenches, 
 prains and injuries since infancy, he realizes 
 he enormous possibility of strains and dis- 
 lacements to these joints over the other 
 arger and stronger joints of the body, 
 liese displacements do, in fact, occur more 
 requently, and the parts supplied by the 
 erves and blood vessels connected with the 
 Dints become correspondingly impoverished 
 nd actually diseased, or at lease their resist- 
 nce is weakened and they become liable to 
 isease. The most important cause of dis- 
 ase is mechanical disturbance along the 
 pine, and for two powerful reasons : because 
 le spinal joints are in themselves peculiarly 
 able to derangements, and because the 
 Dinal joints are, through the nerves, in such 
 itimate and vital relation with all other 
 arts of the body. 
 
 What person has not experienced the 
 ngling of his fingers from pressure on the 
 crazy bone"? You have then realized that 
 hen the nerve was irritated at the elbow, 
 le effect was referred to the termination of 
 te nerve. Eeasoning along the same lines 
 e may logically expect and do find similar 
 Sects on the more delicately organized 
 ssues of the heart, the lungs, or other 
 
 33 
 

 Osteopathy, the S c i e n c e 
 
 internal organs, when there is irritation to 
 the nerves supplying them. 
 
 In Fig. 5 there is represented a twisted, 
 i. e., rotated, third cervical vertebra. Such a 
 condition is as certainly met with as is a 
 dislocated hip. It requires no stretch of| 
 the imagination to see how this delicate 
 joint might be strained or misplaced if the 
 larger and stronger hip-joint be subject toi 
 such derangements. This condition is one 
 often observed by the osteopaths and a refer- 1 
 ence to Fig. 6, showing the nerve connection 
 from the upper part of the neck, will enabl 
 anyone to see that headaches, eye troubles,; 
 facial neuralgia, catarrhal conditions of the 
 head or other such conditions might resul 
 through this nervous disturbance. This ver- 
 tebra is taken as typical of a possible de 
 rangement or misplacement in this or an^ 
 other direction. Such conditions usually! 
 result from falls, though it often happens thai 
 some muscular strain, some quick or awkwarc 
 movement, will produce the described effect 
 In this illustration (Fig. 5) there is also, i 
 will be observed, a misplaced rib. Such i 
 thing does occur, but not without causing 
 some direct or reflex trouble. Anothe 
 rotated (second dorsal) vertebra is als^ 
 shown. It is not a difficult thing for th 
 skilled osteopath to diagnose these conditions 
 Certain bony points are compared criticalrj 
 with certain other points and the correct o| 
 
 34 
 
j f Healing by Adjustment 
 
 listurbed relation of all parts is established, 
 [t embraces precisely the same principle em- 
 ployed in surgery in diagnosing a displaced 
 shoulder or hip. However, it is only the 
 )steopathic physician who is trained to be 
 dive to the recognition of these slight differ- 
 ences of position or trained to correct them. 
 In Figs. 7-8 are seen some of the 
 ictual abnormalities that are found and 
 torrected daily by osteopathic physicians in 
 >ractice throughout the country. In these 
 pictures you will observe that the anatomical 
 regularities are often gross enough to be 
 ♦bserved through the soft tissues of the back. 
 There are many others, not visible, that are 
 jievertheless found and corrected by the 
 killed fingers of the osteopath. Naturally 
 p ou are moved to ask why the doctors of 
 t aedicine themselves have never heretofore 
 [ iscovered these things and announced their 
 onnection with disease. Frankly, I do not 
 now any more than I know why during the 
 
 Iiany centuries that human bodies and 
 nimals were dissected, the true nature and 
 ause of the circulation of the blood was never 
 discovered until the time of Win. Harvey. I 
 »| light answer you in the language of one of 
 .j heir own number, who says, "what they can- 
 v ot perceive through clumsy and ill-trained 
 ^ngers they are inclined to deny." These 
 i onditions are not figments of the osteopathic 
 li pagination, for both dissection and the 
 
 35 
 
 1 
 
Osteopathy, the Science 
 
 X-ray have in innumerable instances verified 
 the findings of the trained touch of the 
 osteopathic physician. 
 
 Proceeding a little further down the spine 
 we come to its lung connections, as shown in 
 Fig. 9. Here we find disturbances that may 
 lead to asthma, chronic bronchitis, and 
 pleurisy. We may even find as well predis- 
 positions to acute lung troubles, because by 
 the irritation from these " lesions' ' the resist- 
 ance of the lung tissue is lowered. Here may 
 be illustrated the osteopathic idea of the part 
 that germs play in the production of disease. 
 For instance, the lesion in the lung area could 
 not of itself cause tuberculosis, or pneumonia, 
 for there must be a specific germ present in 
 either disease, but the lesion could so lower 
 the vitality of the lung tissue that the latter 
 could not resist or overcome the germs of 
 tuberculosis or pneumonia as do the lungs of 
 the individual who has no spinal derange- 
 ment at this point. The recovery from these 
 diseases, if it occurred, would be much more 
 difficult in the patient who had the lesion. A 
 displaced rib is shown in Fig. 10 ; this when 
 occurring on the right side causes a train of 
 symptoms so closely resembling appendicitis 
 that surgeons have often operated for it. It 
 is also the fruitful cause of pains in the side. 
 Here is also shown, as well as in Figs. 11 and 
 12, one of the most important lesions in the 
 entire body, a displaced innominate bone. Id 
 
 36 
 
 
 
 
VERTEBPAL A/PTllfr 
 
 2d CERVICAL NERVE 
 -SCALENUS MED/U5 
 
 SCALENUS AliT/CUJ 
 BRACHIAL PLEXUS 
 
 ht RIB (UPWARD) 
 
 1st INTERCOSTAL 
 NERVE & VESSEL 
 
 Zd THOR. VERT. 
 ROTATED. 
 
 FIG. 5. 
 
FIG. 8. 
 
 
FIG. 9. 
 
of Healing by Adjustment 
 
 the past four or five years the "regular" 
 medical profession has stumbled upon the 
 occurrence of this condition and has tried to 
 appropriate it as an original discovery of its 
 own. Osteopathic literature abounded in 
 mention of this condition, years before the 
 "regulars" had ever heard of it, and in fact 
 while they were strenuously denying the 
 possibility of any derangement whatever at 
 this point. Bearing in mind the strong muscles 
 attached to this bone from the spinal column 
 above and from the legs below, one can 
 readily appreciate the many and widespread 
 disturbances that may arise at this point from 
 derangements. Intense and persistent back- 
 aches, sciatica, lameness, and diseases of the 
 internal pelvic organs, are some of the 
 numerous conditions that are cured by cor- 
 recting misplacements of bones in this region. 
 These conditions might be traced on and 
 on, until we had covered all the diseases to 
 which the human body is heir. Every mis- 
 ■ placed or strained joint, or any misplaced 
 I tissue becomes a central point from which go 
 irritating and resistance-reducing impulses. 
 The effects upon the internal organs likewise 
 | could be traced, for each spinal nerve has its 
 definite connections with external tissues and 
 internal organs. 
 
 37 
 
Osteopathy, the Science 
 
 OSTEOPATHY 
 A Comparison 
 
 There are in vogue at the present time 
 three prominent methods or schools of treat- 
 ment, the medicinal, the mental, and the 
 manipulative. To the end that the modus 
 operandi of these schools of practice may 
 adequately be understood, a brief resume of 
 the formation, the principles of nutrition, and 
 the defensive powers of the body is a neces- I 
 sary introduction. 
 
 The human body develops from a single cell 
 so small that it is invisible to the naked eye, 
 and so minute that it can be studied only 
 under a high power microscope. In the course 
 of development these tiny cells begin to differ 
 one from another, and from these cells 
 multiple tissues and organs, bone, muscle, 
 brain, and blood, with all of their respective 
 functions are formed and evolved. 
 
 Each cell is in itself a vital unit. The 
 health and activity of any organ is the sum 
 of the health and activity of its individual 
 cells. The different parts of the body are 
 united and controlled by the nerves, them- 
 selves cells with long prolongations. These 
 nerve fibres connect the cells of the 
 different organs with the great governing 
 
 38 
 
 
of Healing by Adjustment 
 
 center, the brain, by which all their activities 
 are controlled and regulated. Thus it 
 becomes evident that any interference with 
 the nerve connections of a single cell or 
 group of cells causes interference with their 
 every function, and may initiate their sick- 
 ness or induce their death. 
 
 It is said that life began as a single cell, in 
 the waters of the briny deep. Be that as it 
 may, it is none the less a fact that each cell 
 of the body must bathe in a fluid, the blood, a 
 portion of which wonderfully resembles sea 
 water. Each cell receives its food supply 
 from the blood and pours into it its waste 
 material. Thus it is that the blood stream 
 brings food and carries sewage. It carries 
 throughout the body elements of life-giving 
 food as well as death-dealing poison. If any 
 : cell or group of cells is deprived of this con- 
 tact with the blood stream, it dies a three-fold 
 death ; a death of starvation because it re- 
 , ceives no food, a death of poison because it 
 J is soon killed by its own excreta, and a death 
 | of thirst because it is deprived of its briny 
 bath. Cell health is impossible without a 
 : good circulation of pure blood, and bodily 
 i health in turn is dependent upon cell health. 
 
 The blood is manufactured from the food 
 we eat, the water we drink and the air we 
 breathe, and from these it is constantly 
 i receiving cell food by the processes of diges- 
 tion and assimilation. It is constantly pass- 
 
 39 
 
Osteopathy, the Science 
 
 ing through the kidneys, liver and lungs, the 
 office of each being to rid it of certain poi- 
 sons. The blood is therefore continuously 
 being prepared from the food and con- 
 stantly being purified by the eliminating 
 organs. Nothing else than pure air and pure 
 food and pure water can add to its health- 
 giving properties, nor is any foreign material 
 necessary for its purification. Thus the blood 
 presents a "balanced ration' ' for cell use and 
 the addition of anything other than air and 
 food and water is a pollution rendering it 
 unfit for cell food. 
 
 The blood is itself composed of red and 
 white blood cells, together with a liquid 
 portion called serum. The red blood-cells 
 carry oxygen, fuel, to the tissues. The white 
 blood-cells are the soldiers, the standing army 
 of the body. Besides this they are the repair 
 men and the scavengers. They have the 
 power of independent motion and can leave 
 the blood vessels and wander about at will in 
 the tissues. Here their function is to attack 
 and destroy invading germs and to devour 
 particles of dead foreign matter. They form 
 a defensive army against living enemies from 
 without, and whenever germ invasion 
 threatens or occurs or an injury is received 
 they rush like trained soldiers, in great num- 
 bers, to destroy the invading host, to repair 
 the damage, or to remove the debris and the 
 wreckage from the scene of disaster. Often 
 
 40 
 
 I 
 
IZth RIB (DOUtl a INUAk 
 
 — LAST THOR. NERVE 
 
 coritiiCTion 
 
 with Lunemntmti 
 
 -LIVER 
 
 LUMBAR VESSELS 
 
 LUMBAR NERVES 
 
 V. IttttOMINATE 
 § (FORWARD) 
 
 -SUPERIOR GLUTEAL VE55EL 
 
 CREAT SCIflTIC NERVE 
 
 (OIKi mil ISCHIADIC! 
 '•rSCIATIC VESSEL 
 
 FLMJIR(DOWHARD) 
 
FIG. 11 
 
LAST THORACIC 
 
 IflFERIOR VENA CAVA 
 LUMBAR PLEXUS 
 
 IN NOMINATE 
 
 poupm's uo 
 
 FEMORAL ARTERY 
 FEMORAL VEIN 
 
 A fiT. CRURAL NERVE 
 
 coccrx. 
 
 GREAT SCIATIC NERVt 
 
 FIG. 12. 
 
of Healing by Adjustment 
 
 many of them succumb in the struggle and 
 their dead bodies form pus or " matter' ' so 
 often observed after injuries. They are an 
 embodiment of the healing power of nature, 
 and recovery from infectious diseases is due 
 largely to their activity. That many drugs 
 weaken or destroy their powers of defense 
 is positive proof of the harmfulness of drug 
 medication. While the other cells are not 
 such active defenders of the body, they are 
 indispensable assistants and possess great 
 powers of resistance. 
 
 In the blood are present other substances, 
 originating perhaps in the white blood cells 
 or perhaps in bodily organs, which have the 
 power to resist or to destroy the germs. 
 These substances neutralize the poisons pro- 
 duced by germs, they retard their movements, 
 dissolve them, and predigest them in prepara- 
 tion for the white blood cells to devour. They 
 are known as germicides, antitoxins, agglu- 
 tinins, bacteriolysins and opsonins. So it is 
 that blood is nature's own antiseptic, and 
 germs disappear and health returns wherever 
 it flows in proper quality and quantity. 
 
 Without discussing in argumentative fash- 
 ion the philosophy of the medicinal methods, 
 we may say that in the main they inculcate 
 the introduction into the body of some outside 
 agency, a foreign substance, usually a poison, 
 to effect a cure. This they claim is "assist- 
 ing Nature.' ' This method has been in use 
 
 41 
 
Osteopathy, the Science 
 
 for centuries, regardless of the fact that 
 marvelous advances have been made in every 
 other department of medical knowledge. In 
 anatomy, physiology, and the whole science of 
 diseases, a wonderful development has been 
 realized; yet during this time the plan of 
 drugging the sick has continued without 
 change, though thousands of remedies have 
 been tried and proved useless. 
 
 Drugging was in vogue during the days 
 when science was in absolute ignorance of the 
 true cause and nature of the circulation of the 
 blood. Harvey's discovery was a revelation, 
 and in its light all medical books had to be 
 rewritten; yet the practice of drugging the 
 sick continued. When the body was declared 
 to be made up of "a slimy and gelatinous 
 fluid," drugs were given. After the micro- 
 scope had demonstrated that the body was a 
 commonwealth of cells, each cell a vital unit, 
 anatomy and physiology were revolutionized ; 
 but drugs were still administered. 
 
 In the days before anything was known of 
 the processes of digestion, assimilation or 
 excretion, drugs were relied upon to cure. 
 After experimentation with the stomach 
 pump and the test tube had shown that all 
 these vital activities were disturbed by drugs, 
 their use still was unabated. Knowledge of 
 the body has increased, the secrets of its 
 silent processes have been made known, much 
 of the mystery of disease has been solved, but 
 
 42 
 
of Healing by Adjustment 
 
 the practice, thousands of years old, of 
 putting poisons into diseased bodies, has in 
 this time changed not a whit in principle, and 
 only in the kind and quantity of the poison 
 administered. 
 
 A remedy once introduced into the system 
 finds its way by absorption into the blood. 
 Here it has no power to go exclusively to the 
 diseased part, but must go to all parts alike. 
 It must come in contact with each delicate 
 cell. There is no assurance that it may not 
 derange some unaffected part; on the con- 
 trary there is almost a certainty that it will 
 result in some derangement. It is an axiom 
 in therapeutics, as well as in physics, that for 
 every action there is a corresponding reac- 
 tion. Often the reaction from a dose of 
 drugs entails a great deal more disturbance 
 than the action does good. There is nothing 
 but pure food and water that can be intro- 
 duced without harm, and nothing else has the 
 power to rebuild diseased tissues. 
 
 Eemedies are given to "assist nature,' ' but 
 no one has yet been able to explain how 
 nature can be assisted in an unnatural 
 manner by the introduction of foreign and 
 extraneous material into the body. These 
 contaminate the blood upon which each cell 
 must feed, cause it to cease to be a "balanced 
 ration,' ' and as a consequence cell health and 
 nutrition suffer in proportion. In but the 
 fewest diseases is there any claim that the 
 
 43 
 
Osteopathy, the Science 
 
 drug has power to kill the germs, and even in 
 these cases there is great danger of killing the 
 body cells instead. All remedies that are not 
 foods must be eliminated from the body, and 
 the introduction of a poison imposes an addi- 
 tional burden as well as irritation upon the 
 eliminating organs. 
 
 Internal remedies are uncertain and unde- 
 pendable. There is no power to control their 
 action or to limit the consequences of such 
 action and the results are never the same in 
 any two instances. Out of the thousands of 
 remedies given there are less than half a 
 dozen of the so-called " specifics' 9 whose 
 action can be thoroughly relied upon. They 
 are poisons that require great care in their 
 dosage for fear of causing death. They are 
 harmful when given to well people. They do 
 not remove causes, they merely mask 
 symptoms. 
 
 We search in vain for any consistent funda- 
 mental principles in drug administration. 
 The tenets of today become the heresies of 
 tomorrow. Bleeding, that was once used for 
 nearly all diseases, is now declared to be 
 pernicious. Famished fever patients who 
 were once denied water are now allowed all 
 they desire. Antimony, once the reliance in 
 many diseases, is now seldom given. Calomel, 
 once the mainstay for causing activity of the 
 liver, is now declared by the best authorities 
 to have no such action. The persecuted of a 
 
 44 
 
of Healing by Adjustment 
 
 few generations ago are the heroes of today. 
 No one knows but that Friedmann, of anti- 
 tuberculosis-turtle-serum fame, may yet have 
 a monument erected to him. He undoubtedly 
 will achieve such laurels if medical history 
 repeats itself. 
 
 The Homeopathic system of drug medica- 
 tion originated about the year 1800. Its 
 fundamental principle was that the patient 
 must be given a remedy that would in health 
 produce symptoms similar to those from 
 which he was suffering. Only one remedy 
 should be given at a time and that in the 
 minutest quantity. The subdivision, or 
 "potentizing," the remedy immensely devel- 
 oped its power for cure : common table salt 
 in a crude state is inert; but when given in 
 the 30th potency (one grain divided by thirty, 
 ten times, represented by a fraction whose 
 numerator is one, and whose denominator is 
 one followed by thirty ciphers), it becomes a 
 powerful remedy. This is claimed to be true 
 of other inert substances, such as ordinary 
 charcoal. These potencies have been run to 
 1,000 or even 1,000,000, but it is claimed that 
 when thus diluted, "they represent such an 
 extreme power that only men of the highest 
 skill in homeopathy dare use them because of 
 the risk of incurring possibly disastrous 
 results.' ' (Boericke & Anshutz, Elements of 
 Homeopathy). The logical conclusion of this 
 reasoning brings us to the absurdity that the 
 
 45 
 
Osteopathy, the Science 
 
 smaller the dose the greater the danger, or if 
 the patient only takes little enough of a 
 sufficiently harmless remedy the results might 
 prove exceedingly disastrous. 
 
 The dosage was in point of fact reduced to 
 such infinitesimal proportions that it was 
 presumptuous to expect any effect from it 
 whatever. The fact was evident that if the 
 dosage of the " regulars" was necessary, then 
 the dosage of the homeopaths was absolutely 
 without effect. On the other hand, if the 
 homeopathic doses were effective (and the 
 results from this treatment were altogether 
 as good as these of the "regular" school), 
 then the enormous doses of the "regulars" 
 were certainly unnecessary and harmful. 
 This conflict between the two principal 
 schools of drug medication demonstrated 
 clearly that drugs were unnecessary for cure ; 
 and, in this way, homeopathy has been a great 
 boon to the human race, and has prepared the 
 public for the favorable consideration of the 
 drugless methods of healing. 
 
 Of the non-material methods, Christian 
 Science is best known. Its fundamental 
 principle is that, "nothing is real but mind. 
 Matter and sickness are subjective states of 
 error that can be dispelled by a true knowl- 
 edge of God and Christ." To the reasoning 
 of this cult, small-pox is a "subjective state 
 of error," as is likewise the idea that the 
 idisease is contagious. So too, perhaps, is 
 
 46 
 
of Healing by Adjustment 
 
 your neighbor's burning house, and the idea 
 that your own, adjoining it, will catch fire. 
 
 Whatever else may be said of it, this school 
 has done great good in calling attention to 
 the healing-power of mental attitude in 
 diseases, and has been instrumental to a great 
 degree in furthering the development of 
 scientific psycho-therapy. There is nothing 
 new in their methods of healing, nor have 
 they ever effected any cures that have not 
 been duplicated by other psychic methods. 
 
 Those appealing in behalf of osteopathy do 
 not ask you to accept that which you cannot 
 perceive, nor to deny the indisputable evi- 
 dence of the physical senses. Osteopathy is the 
 recognized manipulative method of cure. Its 
 principles are in accord with all the findings 
 of science. It embraces the marvelous revela- 
 tions of the microscope and all the discoveries 
 in anatomy, physiology and disease manifes- 
 tations. It recognizes the cell as the basis of 
 life, of health, and of disease, and that cell 
 health depends upon a free flow of nerve force 
 and an unobstructed blood supply. These 
 conditions can obtain only when all parts of 
 the body are in perfect position. The funda- 
 mental principle of osteopathy is that struc- 
 ture must be perfect, all parts of the body in 
 proper place, in order that function be per- 
 fect; or, in other words, " structure deter- 
 mines function." 
 
 Osteopathy maintains that poisons cannot 
 
 47 
 
Osteopathy, the Science 
 
 make health. Health can come only from a 
 proper quantity and quality of nature's great 
 nutrient and antiseptic, blood. This is 
 possible only with unobstructed nerve paths 
 and open blood channels. The purpose of 
 osteopathic manipulations is to secure these 
 conditions. 
 
 Osteopathy is based upon the demonstrable 
 fact that when the body cells have a perfect 
 supply of good blood and are in communica- 
 tion with the brain through the nerves that 
 they perform their duties promptly and 
 efficiently and are invincible to their ever- 
 present enemies, germs. 
 
 Osteopathy assists nature in a natural 
 manner and does not derange unaffected 
 parts. It adds no contamination to the blood 
 and imposes no additional duty upon the 
 eliminating organs. There is no danger of 
 poisoning a patient nor making a drug fiend 
 by its ministrations. There is no harmful or 
 unpleasant reaction from its use ; its action is 
 as certain and dependable as are the laws of 
 anatomy and physiology. More than all else, 
 it is essentially a treatment for the removal 
 of the primary, causative factors in disease. 
 
of Healing by Adjustment 
 
 LABORATORY PROOF OF OSTEO- 
 PATHIC THEORIES 
 
 Osteopathic theories had been put to prac- 
 tical and convincing tests for many years and 
 the results demonstrated had been uniformly 
 successful and satisfactory. The osteopathic 
 profession had insisted that "lesions" and 
 anatomical irregularities of the body machine, 
 of the spine especially, were actual occur- 
 rences, for they had located them, removed 
 them, and restored their patients to health. 
 While all this was convincing to the average 
 mind there was still lacking the indisputable 
 evidence of scientific demonstration, evidence 
 which the judicious mind had a right to de- 
 mand. If osteopathic theories had a corres- 
 pondence in fact, then they were capable of 
 proof ; it was proof alone that would satisfy. 
 Knowing that their method must stand or fall 
 by the results of scientific investigation, and 
 assured that theory must ultimately clash 
 with reality, the osteopaths themselves de- 
 manded facts. 
 
 For the conduct of necessary tests and 
 experimentation, modern laboratory facilities 
 and equipment equal to that of the institu- 
 tions of highest scientific attainment, were 
 necessary. For this purpose the osteopathic 
 
 49 
 
Osteopathy, the Science 
 
 physicians of the world have out of their own 
 earnings subscribed $100,000 as the beginning 
 of a $1,000,000 fund to endow the A. T. Still 
 Eesearch Institute. (Fig. 13). This institu- 
 tion was chartered to "perfect the application 
 of osteopathy and to extend its possibilities 
 of service to mankind.' ' Unlike other re- 
 search institutes it first appealed, not to the 
 public nor to millionaire philanthropists, but 
 to the members of its own profession for re- 
 quisite funds. Sufficient funds have already 
 accrued to the foundation, to justify the em- 
 ployment of several trained laboratory work- 
 ers. Through these experiments the original 
 contentions of the osteopaths have been veri- 
 fied, and osteopathy has been demonstrated 
 the most rational, scientific and dependable 
 method of treating diseases yet conceived. 
 These workers have gone to the heart of the 
 contention, produced the lesions (derange- 
 ments of structure), have later shown their 
 presence by dissection, and have demon- 
 strated beyond cavil that the lesion is the 
 primal cause of the disease. They have fur- 
 ther proved beyond peradventure or question 
 that the activity of the internal organs can be 
 normalized by manipulation of the govern- 
 ing spinal centers, and that the bodily resist- 
 ance to disease can be increased by oste- 
 opathic treatment. 
 
 In this work more than 500 animals, — dogs, 
 monkeys, cats, rabbits and guinea pigs — have 
 
 50 
 
of Healing by Adjustment 
 
 been operated on and scientifically and per- 
 sistently studied to determine the effect of the 
 osteopathic lesion and the results of osteo- 
 pathic adjustment. These animals were anes- 
 thetized and slight strains or malpositions of 
 their spines produced. These injuries were 
 so slight in character as to be no greater than 
 those found in the human body in daily prac- 
 tice. In no case was violence used, there was 
 no displacement of joints or fracture of bones 
 or laceration of the soft tissues. The avowed 
 object was the production of a slight slipping 
 or maladjustment of the spinal joints, the 
 ordinary osteopathic lesion as every day 
 observable in the human body. As a rule the 
 animal was not in the least disabled, or at 
 most, he recovered in a day or two. A trifling 
 ineptitude, a slight soreness or stiffness at 
 the seat of the injury, and some sensitiveness 
 to touch remained, as is usually found in the 
 human subject. 
 
 The animals were watched for a variable 
 length of time, from three to eighty days, and 
 were then killed with chloroform. They were 
 examined under the usual exacting conditions 
 of a post mortem, and the findings were tabu- 
 lated. On examination it was found that the 
 ligaments and other soft tissues about the 
 joints had been strained, stretched, congested, 
 and inflamed. All the nerve tissues of the 
 spinal cord, the nerve roots and the nerves 
 and their branches corresponding to the seat 
 
 5! 
 
Osteopathy, the Science 
 
 of injury showed diseased changes, conges- 
 tion, inflammation, and even degeneration. 
 The blood vessels in the injured area were en- 
 gorged and their walls were thickened. 
 
 The most significant fact was that the 
 internal organs whose nerve supply came 
 from the damaged area showed marked 
 changes. These changes corresponded de- 
 finitely to the paths of the nerves supplying 
 the respective organs. When the nerves con- 
 trolling the stomach and intestines were in- 
 volved the powers of motion, secretion, and 
 digestion in these organs were altered and 
 lessened. Their lining membranes were con- 
 gested and inflamed. The results when the 
 kidney centers were involved were just as 
 positive. Congestion and inflammation with 
 all the attendant changes of acute Bright 's 
 disease resulted. The correction of the mal- 
 adjustment in these cases caused a sub- 
 sidence of the symptoms. Derangements of 
 the liver and spleen were found when the mal- 
 adjustments were caused in that region of 
 the spine from which they receive their nerve 
 supply. In other cases the pancreas was 
 acutely disordered. In these cases an analysis 
 of the urine showed that it contained sugar, 
 an evidence of diabetes. Goitres are produced 
 in several animals when the spinal injuries 
 involved the nerves supplying the thyroid 
 glands. Goitres thus produced were cured 
 by correcting the derangement in the same 
 
 52 
 
of Healing by Adjustment 
 
 animal. All the changes in the internal 
 organs were of an acute character and corres- 
 ponded accurately with the spinal or rib de- 
 rangement. 
 
 From these cases the following are re- 
 ported as typical : 
 
 In one animal, two weeks after the opera- 
 tion, the third, fourth, and fifth ribs on the 
 right side were found to be dislocated upward 
 at their vertebral ends. There was the usual 
 ligamentous and muscular tension in the 
 affected area, as well as a great deal of con- 
 gestion in the nerves and in that region of the 
 spinal cord. This dog was sick and inactive 
 for a week following the first forty-eight 
 hours after the operation. The spleen was 
 swollen to twice its normal size. 
 
 In one instance the lower and middle dorsal 
 regions were sprung forward with only 
 moderate force. Six weeks later a separa- 
 tion was found between the tenth and 
 eleventh dorsal vertebrae. The fourth and 
 fifth ribs on the right side were sprung up- 
 ward at their vertebral ends. The muscles 
 and ligaments contiguous to the injured area 
 were very tense and rigid. There was found 
 a stricture of the small intestine, and the 
 spinal nerves between the tenth and eleventh 
 vertebrae were congested. 
 
 In another case a lateral twist between the 
 third and fourth dorsal vertebrae was pro- 
 
 53 
 
Osteopathy, the Science 
 
 duced, and the vertebral ends of the third 
 and fourth ribs were subluxated upward. The 
 usual rigidity and tenseness of the tissues 
 was found. This dog lost much flesh and was 
 very sick from twenty-four hours after the 
 operation until the time of dissection. The 
 stomach walls were thin and dilated and a 
 large area at either end of the stomach was 
 found noticeably congested. 
 
 In still another case, nineteen days after 
 the production of the lesion, twists between 
 the second and third and between the fourth 
 and fifth dorsal vertebrae were found. The 
 nerve roots, the nerves, and the correspond- 
 ing part of the spinal cord were still found 
 to be congested. The dog was ill, suffered 
 from excessive thirst and loss of appetite and 
 flesh. The spleen was found to be slightly 
 enlarged and two-thirds of the stomach area 
 showed marked congestion. 
 
 In still other cases experiments upon every 
 one of fifteen dogs showed some disturbance 
 from the lesions produced. These disturbances 
 varied from slight changes in the urine to 
 conditions sufficiently severe to cause death. 
 The lesions were produced in the middle and 
 lower dorsal regions. Evidences of diabetes, 
 sugar in the urine, appeared in every animal 
 operated thus, and continued for a period of 
 two to seven months. In some of the animals 
 in which the lesions were corrected the symp- 
 
 54 
 
of Healing by Adjustment 
 
 toms disappeared to return when the lesions 
 were reproduced. Either diarrhoea or con- 
 stipation occurred in eight of the fifteen dogs, 
 and in four the diarrhoea was of severe type. 
 Vomiting occurred in five. It must be re- 
 membered that the experiment included other 
 "control" dogs under identical food and care 
 and surroundings, and these latter showed no 
 unusual symptoms whatever. And it should 
 be made plain that the lesions produced at 
 the same point in the spine made one disease, 
 or affected one organ, and those at another 
 point; lower or higher, always affected an- 
 other organ. 
 
 In a series of experiments upon monkeys, 
 selected because of their close resemblance in 
 structure and function to the human being, 
 very remarkable results were secured. These 
 animals were kept under observation for 
 several weeks before they were operated 
 upon, to insure that they were in a healthy 
 condition. With one isolated exception they 
 either retained their weight or gained flesh 
 during this time. After the lesions were 
 produced every animal operated upon lost 
 weight; and this loss in weight was re- 
 gained after the lesions were corrected. 
 There was about the same proportion of 
 intestinal disturbances and diabetic symp- 
 toms as occurred with the dogs. A most 
 remarkable feature of these experiments was 
 that not merely once or twice but even three 
 
 55 
 
Osteopathy, the Science 
 
 times in the same animal intestinal disorders 
 were cured by adjusting the lesion and caused 
 again by reproducing it. As in the case of 
 the dogs, other monkeys kept in similar cages, 
 on the same diet and the same general care, 
 showed no evidences of disease whatever. 
 More conclusive evidence that spinal irregu- 
 larities cause disease cannot be produced. 
 These experiments demonstrate scientifically 
 and undeniably not only that the lesion does 
 cause disease but that the correction of the 
 lesion cures disease. 
 
 A prominent medical writer has said, "The 
 body is like a piano or a harp, to be played 
 upon at will. All that is needed is to work 
 out the principles on a practical physiological 
 basis." This physiological basis the experi- 
 mental department of the A. T. Still Besearch 
 Institute has worked out. By experiment 
 upon the human being and the lower animals 
 they have established unmistakably many 
 centers along the spine, by the manipulation 
 of which differing effects can be produced 
 upon the several internal organs of the 
 body. It has been scientifically proved by 
 experimentation that the proper application 
 of osteopathic manipulations can increase 
 or decrease general blood pressure as may 
 be desired. It has also been demonstrated 
 that by similar means the activities of the 
 kidneys can be increased from twelve to 
 one hundred per cent., and the flow of the 
 
 56 
 
of Healing by Adjustment 
 
 bile from thirty to ninety per cent. The 
 osteopaths have proved the proposition of 
 the medical writer that the spine is indeed the 
 keyboard of this wonderful instrument, the 
 human body, and the nerves and nerve 
 centers are the strings of this harp, through 
 whose instrumentality the osteopathic physi- 
 cian is enabled out of discord and disease to 
 bring forth harmony and health. 
 
 It has been ascertained that the blood con- 
 tains substances whose effect upon germs is 
 to render them more easily destroyed by the 
 white blood cells. These substances have 
 been named opsonins because they seem to 
 prepare the germ cells for digestion by the 
 white blood cells. The degree of their 
 activity is called the opsonic index. Experi- 
 ments have conclusively proved that oste- 
 opathic manipulation of the liver and spleen 
 increases the opsonic index, or the resistance 
 of the body to germ action, to a marked de- 
 gree. This affords explanation of the splen- 
 did results obtained by the osteopathic prac- 
 titioner in the treatment of germ diseases, 
 such as typhoid fever, la grippe, pneumonia, 
 diphtheria, scarlet fever, measles, or menin- 
 gitis. 
 
 These experiments are being continued at 
 the A. T. Still Eesearch Institute to extend 
 the possibilities of osteopathic service to 
 mankind. Since its organization many grate- 
 ful patients have contributed to its endow- 
 
 57 
 
Osteopathy, the Science 
 
 ment. It now affords to those who wish to 
 contribute to a great educational and philan- 
 thropic movement one of the greatest oppor- 
 tunities of the times. 
 
 58 
 
of Healing by Adjustment 
 
 OSTEOPATHY IN ACUTE DISEASES 
 
 It is a significant fact that Dr. Still was a 
 general practitioner and by the nature of his 
 profession his practice consisted in treating 
 diseases of all kinds and of every degree of 
 severity. He was unable to select certain 
 diseases to treat but had to care for them as 
 they presented themselves. 
 
 The work of a general practitioner con- 
 sists, for the greater part, of acute diseases, 
 and it was to combat these that osteopathy 
 was originated and developed. The first 
 patients to whom osteopathic treatment was 
 administered were those ill of acute dis- 
 orders, as fevers, pneumonia, and dysentery. 
 The results in these cases were so extraordi- 
 nary that chronic diseases, the acknowledged 
 failures of the other schools of healing, 
 challenged the new treatment. Proving so 
 successful in these, in which other methods 
 had proved useless, the demand for their 
 treatment was so great that osteopathy has 
 come to be known, largely, though erron- 
 eously, as especially adapted to chronic 
 diseases. 
 
 From the origin of osteopathy it is readily 
 appreciated that the treatment is applicable 
 to that wide category of diseases coming 
 
 59 
 
Osteopathy, the Science 
 
 under the care of the general practitioner. 
 It is neither a remedy for a single disease, 
 nor a special method applicable to some par- 
 ticular class or group of diseases, nor a part 
 of medicine or surgery, but it is a SYSTEM 
 of treatment, broader in its application than 
 the practice of drugs, and adapted to all 
 curable diseases, whether acute or chronic. 
 
 The terms acute or chronic, as applied to 
 diseases, have reference only to duration. 
 An acute disease is, relatively speaking, one 
 of short duration, usually of abrupt onset, 
 and perhaps of a severe course. A chronic 
 disease is one of relatively longer duration, 
 more gradual onset, and perhaps a less severe 
 course. Many diseases pass through an 
 acute stage before they become chronic, and 
 are as a matter of course more easily cured 
 in the beginning than after they have become 
 well established. 
 
 While osteopathy has won its greatest re- 
 nown as a cure for chronic diseases, it is in 
 acute troubles that its most brilliant suc- 
 cesses and quickest results are seen. 
 
 The unfounded objection is sometimes 
 offered that the results of osteopathic treat- 
 ment are too slow to be of service in acute 
 diseases. The fact is that the response to 
 osteopathic manipulations follows as quickly 
 as the tingling in the fingers follows the blow 
 on the " crazy bone," or as promptly as anger 
 blanches the face, or a feeling of shame 
 
 60 
 
of Healing by Adjustment 
 
 flushes the cheek. The response is immedi- 
 ate, simultaneous with the treatment, and 
 comes as rapidly as a nerve can respond to 
 an impulse, or the blood stream course 
 through the diseased part. The curative im- 
 pulse once initiated is reinforced by nature's 
 inherent recuperative powers and is contin- 
 uous. There is no waiting for the action of 
 the remedy until it is absorbed and dis- 
 tributed by the blood current. Such would 
 occupy an interval of from fifteen to thirty 
 minutes even when administered hypodermic- 
 ally, and from one to twelve hours where 
 given by the month. The response, too, is 
 dependable, because it is based upon anatomi- 
 cal and physiological laws and is far different 
 from the blind experiment of putting a poison 
 into an organism, the reaction of which no 
 man can foretell. There is no fear of an 
 idiosyncracy by which a dose harmless to one 
 individual may prove fatal to another. 
 
 Surprise is sometimes expressed that the 
 osteopathic physician should claim to effect 
 internal conditions in fevers, internal inflam- 
 mations, or acute diseases. Often those ex- 
 pressing surprise at this claim accept without 
 question and with remarkable credulity the 
 glaring fallacy that poisons,- — substances, 
 which if given in health, cause disease, are 
 able when given in disease to restore one to 
 health. There is no microscope, no X-ray, 
 nor other contrivance of man, able to follow a 
 
 61 
 
Osteopathy, the Science 
 
 dose of drugs through the laboratory of the 
 human body and to solve the mystery as to 
 what change the drug undergoes, or where 
 the change takes place, or what effects it has 
 and how they are produced, or to measure 
 the possible harm from this seeming good. 
 
 It 'has been said that the essential feature 
 of osteopathy is adjustment, yet there are 
 instances where it may be inexpedient or 
 inadvisable to attempt to secure adjustment. 
 This sometimes occurs in severe and acute ill- 
 ness. Under such circumstances, the osteo- 
 pathic physician has very definite and re- 
 liable resources at his command. There are 
 along the spine certain nerve centers from 
 which pass out nerves controlling the internal 
 organs and tissues. By the manipulation of 
 these centers the internal conditions are con- 
 trolled naturally and effectively. The exist- 
 ence of some of these centers is common 
 medical knowledge, while the location of 
 many of them has been demonstrated by the 
 osteopaths through experiments upon lower 
 animals and the human being. The effects 
 of correct manipulation of these centers are 
 harmless and in accord with the natural and 
 known laws of physiology. They are uni- 
 form and demonstrable and belief in their 
 action does not require the credulous accept- 
 ance of an unsolved riddle. 
 
 The success of osteopathy in the treatment 
 of chronic diseases can not be questioned. It 
 
 62 
 
of Healing by Adjustment 
 
 is reasonable to suppose that any method 
 successful in diseases of long standing, that 
 is, in chronic cases where the vitality was low 
 and recuperative power was weakened by 
 continued illness, would prove more success- 
 ful in diseases of recent occurrence, that is in 
 acute cases where the vitality was vigorous 
 and the recuperative power active. Such 
 reasoning is borne out by facts. 
 
 It is a matter of constant comment that 
 the best doctors of medicine are giving the 
 fewest drugs. It is no uncommon thing for 
 a case of pneumonia, typhoid fever or other 
 acute disease to be treated by medical men 
 without the administration of a dose of medi- 
 cine. The doctor has merely acted in an 
 advisory capacity in the case and other than 
 this whatever good he has done has been 
 negative rather than positive. The good is 
 in what he has not done rather than in what 
 he has done. He has wisely done nothing be- 
 cause he knew that his remedies were capable 
 of much harm. The osteopathic physician, 
 educated as thoroughly as he is in the nat- 
 ural history, the course, the diagnosis and 
 the management of diseases, is just as 
 capable an advisor and has in his skilled 
 fingers and his knowledge of the structure 
 and working of all parts of the body and the 
 nerve centers controlling them, means of 
 positive good. He can set free nature's pent 
 up reparative forces, liberate the natural 
 
 63 
 
Osteopathy, the Science 
 
 antitoxins, bactericides and opsonins, stimu- 
 late by natural means sluggish and inactive 
 organs, repress those that are over-active, 
 and by these means cause a cessation of the 
 ravages of disease. 
 
 Nothing the medical man does that is of 
 proven value is omitted by the osteopath. 
 Nursing, dieting, bathing, and all hygienic 
 or sanitary measures are employed. And 
 nothing that the former does that is capable 
 of harm, the injection of poisons into an al- 
 ready diseased body, does the latter fail to 
 omit. All the indications for which drugs 
 are given are adequately met by osteopathic 
 treatment; the relief of pain, the reduction 
 of fever, the quieting of nervousness, the pro- 
 duction of sleep, the stimulation of organs for 
 the elimination of poisons, the stimulation of 
 liver, kidneys, heart, or the repression of an 
 overactive organ. All this is effected with- 
 out the danger or discomfort of disturbing 
 one part in the hope of affecting another 
 favorably. 
 
 Sometimes the uninitiated, while watching 
 a rather vigorous treatment* will say: "My! 
 I couldn 't stand that. ' ' The assertion is true. 
 Neither could the critic wear another's 
 clothes. The question is sometimes asked, 
 "do you treat babies?" When told that we 
 do, the next exclamation is, "like that?" 
 Certainly not! No more than medical men 
 would give the infant and the adult the same 
 
 64 
 

 Home of the A. T. Still Research Institute. 
 
 Building for Experimental Work. 
 
 FIG. 13 
 
of Healing by Adjustment 
 
 amount of medicine at a dose. The principle 
 is the same but the dose is different. It re- 
 quires as much skill for the osteopathic 
 physician to prescribe and administer the 
 proper treatment to a given case as it does 
 for the doctor of medicine to prescribe the 
 proper dose of medicine to a given case. The 
 osteopathic treatment is adapted to the age, 
 vigor and condition of the patient. None are 
 too young, none are too old. Osteopathy is 
 adapted to all periods from birth to old age. 
 The infant and the infirm must be handled 
 with extreme care and gentleness, the more 
 robust with equal skill, but more vigorously, 
 if indicated. Patients are never too weak or 
 too sick to be treated by osteopathy. As a 
 rule in acute diseases the treatments are 
 given much more frequently than in chronic 
 troubles. 
 
 Osteopathy treats acute diseases more suc- 
 cessfully than does any other method of treat- 
 ment. It does not seem necessary after such 
 a statement to enumerate the separate dis- 
 eases, for the assertion includes all diseases 
 that are amenable to any treatment. Yet 
 osteopathy has never made claim to being 
 ;a cure-all. It has its acknowledged limita- 
 tions and does not claim to accomplish the 
 impossible. It is content that, as a system of 
 treatment, it has demonstrated an effective- 
 aess far superior to any other method. 
 
 Thousands of families now call upon the 
 
 65 
 
Osteopathy, the Science 
 
 osteopathic physician for the relief of all 
 their ills and daily he is becoming more 
 popular as a family physician. 
 
 66 
 
of Healing by Adjustment 
 
 Osteopathy — How It Differs from Other 
 Manual Methods. 
 
 In the minds of some otherwise well-in- 
 formed people, osteopathy is occasionally con- 
 fused with massage, Swedish movements, 
 physical culture, exercise, or even simple rub- 
 bing. The medical profession particularly 
 appears confused as to what the practice of 
 osteopathy is. They often labor under the de- 
 lusion that massage and osteopathy are very 
 similar, if not identical. This depreciating 
 idea can issue only from an utter ignor- 
 ance of the cardinal principles of osteopathy, 
 or from a very superficial knowledge of 
 massage. 
 
 These means of treatment just alluded to 
 are each of value under contributing condi- 
 tions, but between them and osteopathy there 
 is little similarity either in principle or prac- 
 | tice. Osteopathic physicians may make use 
 ! of them as aids or adjuncts; as would also the 
 medical practitioners ; but these adjuncts bear 
 no more distinctive or significant a relation 
 to osteopathy than they do to the practice of 
 medicine. It might as well be claimed that 
 they constitute the practice of medicine, as to 
 say that they are the same as osteopathy. 
 It can not be too strongly asserted or im- 
 
 67 
 
Osteopathy, the Science 
 
 pressed that osteopathy is a complete SYS- 
 TEM or science of treatment, while these 
 other manual methods are merely small parts 
 of a system, mere adjuncts or supplements. 
 
 Massage in some form has been practiced 
 by all ancient peoples ; it had reached an ad- 
 vanced stage of perfection as early as the 
 days of Hippocrates. It consists of a series 
 of routine rubbings, strokings, tappings, and 
 kneadings, executed in a general and very in- 
 definite manner. It is such work as is dele- 
 gated to nurses and does not demand especial 
 knowledge of the body or of diseases. 
 
 Swedish movements were introduced in 
 1814 and they consist of little more than 
 systematized exercises. Physical culture 
 was practiced by the ancient Greeks and 
 is merely the application of certain exer- 
 cises for physical development. Ordinary 
 exercise, judiciously prescribed, is of great 
 value, to be sure, under approximately 
 normal conditions; but it would be verg- 
 ing on the criminal to recommend it to 
 patients acutely ill of pneumonia or typhoid 
 fever or meningitis. In the presence of these 
 critical conditions, osteopathy is invaluable, 
 indispensable. 
 
 The fundamental fact in the conception of 
 osteopathy is ADJUSTMENT. Any method 
 which does not embrace this principle is not 
 osteopathy. Neither massage, nor Swedish 
 movements, nor physical culture, nor simple 
 
 68 
 
of Healing by Adjustment 
 
 exercises, have even a remote suggestion tow- 
 ard correcting mal-adjustments of the body 
 structure. This fact places them in an 
 entirely different class from osteopathy. 
 
 To the end of properly adjusting the human 
 machine when any of its parts are deranged 
 and disease is present, the osteopathic phy- 
 sician must possess an intimate knowledge of 
 its structure. An intimate knowledge of the 
 skeleton — its every bone, its individual peculi- 
 arities, its relation to every other bone to 
 which it is joined and to the body as a whole 
 — a deep comprehension of the blood vessels 
 — their devious course and their ultimate mi- 
 nute ramifications, and the parts or organs to 
 which they are distributed ; a mastery of the 
 nerves — from their centers in the cord and 
 brain to the most distant cell over whose funo« 
 tion they preside ; a wide understanding of all 
 the organs of the body, — their location and 
 structure, as well as the evidences of their 
 normal activity or symptoms of their disturb- 
 ance — these are the sine qua non of the equip- 
 ment of the osteopath. No surgeon needs to 
 know anatomy more thoroughly than does the 
 osteopathic physician. His knowledge of 
 anatomy is his chart and compass and his 
 cures will register in proportion to his ability 
 to recognize and correct deranged anatom- 
 ical conditions. He must not only be able to 
 perceive the location of the maladjustment, 
 he must know how it is misplaced to be 
 
 69 
 
Osteopathy, the Science 
 
 able to interpret its effects, and to bring 
 definite mechanical principles to bear in 
 replacing it. Since every moveable joint 
 in the body is liable to misplacement, it 
 is obvious that there can be a great range of 
 maladjustments, both as to their location 
 and character. Consequently there can be no 
 such thing as routine treatment. Each case 
 must be diagnosed and treated according to 
 the causative condition present, and peculiar 
 mechanical principles of treatment will apply 
 to that particular case alone. The manipula- 
 tive skill required of the osteopathic physi- 
 cian must exceed that of the surgeon. Not 
 only the large joints, but every joint in the 
 body, no matter how deeply hidden beneath 
 masses of muscles and tendons or how 
 obscurely located, must be subject to the 
 osteopath's deft hands. His sense of touch 
 must be delicately educated so that no varia- 
 tion from the normal in position or consist- 
 ence of tissues can escape his notice. He 
 must possess the delicate touch of the blind, 
 not that he may read raised print which to the 
 ordinary touch is meaningless, but to the end 
 that he may read, to the minutest deviation 
 from the normal, the structures of the body. 
 No time limit can be set upon the length of 
 an osteopathic treatment because in no two 
 cases are the abnormalities the same. In one 
 case the adjustment may be accomplished in 
 a moment; in another case several minutes 
 
 70 
 
of Healing by Adjustment 
 
 of preliminary relaxing treatment may be 
 required before adjustment can be made. It 
 may be said, with reasonable modifications, 
 that the less the time in which the adjustment 
 can be made, the more skillful will be the 
 treatment and the better the results. The 
 advice of Dr. Still was to "find it, fix it and 
 leave it alone"; this is the keynote of an 
 osteopathic treatment. 
 
 There is no knowledge or skill of value pos- 
 sessed by any other school of healing that is 
 not utilized by the doctor of osteopathy. The 
 adjuncts or aids have their sphere of useful- 
 ness but they are not osteopathy nor are 
 masseurs and other practitioners of manual 
 methods osteopaths. A stone mason is a use- 
 ful member of society, but he is not a 
 sculptor ; a house painter does a good service, 
 but he is not a Raphael ; the engine wiper who 
 keeps the engine rubbed and polished is doing 
 well, but he is not adjusting its deranged 
 parts. So the practitioners of these adjunc- 
 tive methods are each good in their sphere, 
 but they no more approach osteopathy than 
 does stonecutting resemble sculpture, or 
 house-painting, portraiture, or engine-wiping, 
 engineering. 
 
 n 
 
Osteopathy, the Science 
 
 OSTEOPATHY IN DISEASES OF 
 WOMEN. 
 
 It is unnecessary to discuss here the pre- 
 valence of those diseases peculiar to women. 
 Whether it be due to some inherent weakness 
 of their physical organization, the demands of 
 modern society, unhygienic living, improper 
 dress, or what not, the fact remains that 
 women assuredly have more than their pro- 
 portionate share of bodily ills to bear. From 
 the time the girl lays aside the characteristics 
 of the child, for thirty years or more, she is 
 the prey not only to the ills common to the 
 rest of humanity but also numerous other dis- 
 orders peculiar to her sex. 
 
 Special instruments devised for the 
 examination and treatment of diseases of 
 women have been found in the ruins of 
 ancient cities. Specialties were practiced by 
 the physicians of ancient Egypt and it is alto- 
 gether probable that the treatment of the dis- 
 eases peculiar to women was one of the 
 earliest of these specialties. Cleopatra is 
 said to have written books on the subject. 
 
 So prevalent are these diseases today that 
 their treatment comprises a large part of the 
 physician's work. Every school of medicine 
 recognizes their importance to the extent of 
 
 72 
 
of Healing by Adjustment 
 
 having special courses of instruction devoted 
 to them. Their treatment is now one of the 
 most profitable specialties. From the signal 
 and pronounced failure of drugs, the treat- 
 ment in medical hands has become almost en- 
 tirely surgical; and surgery has become the 
 most lucrative as well as the most abused field 
 in medicine. Yet we have no complaint to 
 make against legitimate surgery; there is 
 nothing that can replace it, and its results 
 when properly applied are marvelously bene- 
 ficial. Still it is a patent fact that the 
 medical world is today surgery mad. 
 
 There are few professors in the medical 
 schools today teaching how operations may 
 be avoided or prevented ; but there is a host 
 constantly employed devising new operations, 
 each more daring than the last, and turning 
 out scores of inexperienced operators. Each 
 of these operators, to become expert, must 
 have victims upon whom to operate. The 
 surgical hue and cry is for brilliant and skill- 
 ful operations, too often without sufficient 
 consideration for the patient. 
 
 There are many private and public surgical 
 hospitals to be maintained, and to this end 
 numerous operations are necessary. From 
 the inherent nature of the case, a surgeon, 
 who at best is only human, easily and uncon- 
 sciously becomes so biased as to perceive only 
 the operative side of many cases. It is amaz- 
 ing for what trivial conditions the surgically- 
 
 73 
 
Osteopathy, the Science 
 
 minded doctor will advise operations, — oper- 
 ations serious in nature and operations that 
 offer no positive assurance of relief or cure. 
 There is a strong tendency to regard the re- 
 moval of a diseased organ as not only the 
 proper but the exclusive way to cure, even 
 though the disease be but slight. The physi- 
 cian should realize that there are remedial 
 agencies other than the knife, and should re- 
 strict mutilating and sacrificial operations to 
 their legitimate field. Surgery should be the 
 court of last resort except in those cases in 
 which it is clearly and unmistakably de- 
 manded, for from the consequences of sur- 
 gery there is no appeal. 
 
 Osteopathy possesses resources so power- 
 ful, so active, so reliable, that no woman 
 should be subjected to the dangers and 
 mutilation of an operation until its conserva- 
 tive powers have been intelligently tested. A 
 course of osteopathic treatment does not pre- 
 sent the spectacular effect nor the thrill of a 
 serious and dangerous operation ; it does not 
 create the sympathy among one's friends, so 
 desired by many, nor does it necessitate a 
 long period of convalesence. It does, how- 
 ever, eliminate the danger, shorten the time 
 of recovery, and is altogether less objection- 
 able. From its results there is still an appeal 
 to the knife, if necessary, but after the knife, 
 if unsuccessful, there is no recourse. "Yet 
 such is the haste in the performance of this 
 
 74 
 
of Healing by Adjustment 
 
 work, a work properly of last resort, that our 
 hospitals particularly have become the sacri- 
 ficial temples of this new faith. Here women 
 by the score, without previous attempt at 
 treatment, are persuaded to undergo opera- 
 tions dangerous to life and unwarranted by 
 sound judgment. These operations are often 
 followed by lifelong consequences to those 
 who recover, consequences that are either 
 carefully concealed or else carelessly with- 
 held from their knowledge before consent is 
 given." Too often promises of immediate 
 cure are made, and after the operation the 
 disappointed patient is informed that it re- 
 quires at least a year to recover from the 
 effects of even a successful operation. 
 
 Diseases of women respond to osteopathic 
 treatment promptly. Operations are avoided 
 in many cases in which surgery had been de- 
 clared necessary. The fact is that many 
 operations are unnecessary. While the osteo- 
 pathic colleges teach surgery as a valuable 
 means of treatment in some cases, yet they 
 oppose the tendency to operate for trivial and 
 unnecessary causes, and they teach how these 
 diseases may be cured in many instances 
 without operations. The osteopathic physi- 
 cian is qualified to decide when surgery is 
 necessary and will advise it when it is best. 
 Osteopathic treatment is safe, reliable and 
 free from dangerous after-effects. 
 
 Osteopathy secures its results in these 
 
 75 
 
Osteopathy, the Science 
 
 cases as in others, by the adjustment of de- 
 ranged structure, by the effect upon the pelvic 
 organs resulting from the manipulation of 
 their appropriate centers, and by enforce- 
 ment of all natural laws regulating the needs 
 of the body. Displaced organs are replaced, 
 and their natural supports are so toned up as 
 to retain the organs in place. Congestions 
 and inflammations are reduced by re-estab- 
 lishing normal circulation. The symptom of 
 pain is traced to its original cause and this 
 osteopathy removes. Likewise, irregularities 
 in the natural functions are corrected by 
 finding and removing their causes. 
 
 That part of the spine below the shoulders, 
 about the waist-line, including sacrum and 
 innominates, is the portion in which de- 
 rangements are especially liable to affect 
 the feminine organs and functions. Here the 
 growing girl, nearly always more or less of a 
 " torn-boy,' ' receives in active outdoor life 
 and play many strains and misplacements. 
 These are only of passing notice until she be- 
 gins to bud into womanhood. It is at this 
 period that these derangements begin to re- 
 flexly disturb the new functions of woman- 
 hood, functions that should be initiated as 
 naturally as the bud develops into the rose, as 
 painlessly as her figure develops into that of 
 a woman, and as naivelv as her mind evolves 
 its childish thoughts into mature considera- 
 tions. 
 
 76 
 
of Healing by Adjustment 
 
 Any deviation from this harmonious pro- 
 gram usually indicates some structural 
 derangement along the nerve paths running 
 from the governing centers of these organs ; 
 or displacement of organ from strain or fall ; 
 and it indicates further, that the corrective 
 manipulation of the osteopathic physician, 
 and not the knife of the surgeon is needed. 
 The osteopathic physician can locate and re- 
 move these malpositions of the tissues, set 
 free nature's forces, and thus relieve the 
 pains, the irregularities, and the delays inci- 
 dent thereto. 
 
 Associated with and incident to motherhood 
 is a host of irritating strains and wide room 
 for resultant accidents. As a preparation 
 for these events, nothing is equal to osteo- 
 pathy; it keeps the circulation good, renders 
 active all the functions of the organs, and 
 maintains the general health intact. Accord- 
 ing to the related experiences of thousands of 
 women who have been attended by osteo- 
 pathic physicians during childbirth, it is an 
 inestimable boon. It greatly lessens the pain, 
 shortens the duration, and reduces the likeli- 
 hood of accidents. 
 
 Eesults follow childbearing that may or 
 may not have been avoidable. We refer to 
 inflammations, displacements and irregulari- 
 ties, with all their attendant symptoms. For 
 these the aid of the surgeon is usually 
 invoked, though in many cases unnecessarily. 
 
 77 
 
Osteopathy, the Science 
 
 In most of these cases the application of 
 osteopathic methods will in itself effect the 
 cure. The same structural derangements 
 that cause trouble for the near-grown girl are 
 often the underlying cause for the disturb- 
 ances occurring at childbirth. It may require 
 the additional strain and cares of mother- 
 hood to bring out or cause to become opera- 
 tive the hidden weaknesses, resultants of 
 spinal misplacements or strains received 
 years before. 
 
 At the close of the childbearing period 
 comes another period dreaded by some 
 women; yet it is one that should come as 
 naturally and as tranquilly as autumn follows 
 summer. It is during this period that cancer 
 is most frequent; when this disease occurs 
 there is only one remedy, — the knife — which 
 if used 'Sufficiently early may save life. We 
 acknowledge the limitation of osteopathy 
 here, and the osteopathic physician in these 
 cases will advise surgery. This period is 
 often accompanied by many nervous disturb- 
 ances and when these do occur they are 
 enough to make the time one of dread and 
 foreboding in any woman 's life. Many women 
 look upon these distressing conditions as 
 natural, and bear them without complaint. 
 This is an entirely wrong view, for discom- 
 forts at this time are unnatural and have a 
 removable cause for their occurrence. When 
 the organs involved have a perfect nerve and 
 
 78 
 
Osteopathy, the Science 
 
 blood supply these changes will occur without 
 arousing the reflex miseries so commonly 
 seen. Here again in removing all impedi- 
 ments by adjusting the body structures, osteo- 
 pathy records another victory over human 
 infirmaties. 
 
 79 
 
Osteopathy, the Science 
 
 THE PROPHYLACTIC VALUE OF 
 OSTEOPATHY. 
 
 The greatest advances attained in medical 
 science have occurred along the lines of the 
 prevention of diseases. Improved hygienic 
 and sanitary conditions, will in time, prac- 
 tically eradicate yellow fever and cholera 
 from among civilized nations. Smallpox has 
 ceased to be a scourge. Malaria is being rap- 
 idly stamped out ; typhoid is by no means the 
 menace it once was ; there is a probability 
 that tuberculosis will, at no distant time, be 
 less a scourge than now. While these are 
 achievements that can be recorded, it is at the 
 same time true that some of the most virulent 
 and incurable diseases are increasing. 
 
 In its endeavors toward the prevention of 
 diseases the medical profession has in the 
 main considered the welfare of the mass of 
 society, and has neglected the immediate con- 
 ditions affecting the prevention of disease in 
 the individual. This assertion is not intended 
 as a harsh criticism, but is merely stated for 
 its value as a fact. Osteopathy, while it en- 
 dorses and approves all that has been done 
 for the mass of the people, at the same time 
 meets the needs of the individual and makes 
 a personal, an individual, application of the 
 principles of prevention. 
 
 80 
 
of Healing by Adjustment 
 
 Municipalities, corporations, and indi- 
 vidual enterprises employ inspectors of vari- 
 ous kinds in their business affairs to pre- 
 vent pecuniary or vital disasters. There are 
 building inspectors, fire inspectors, boiler in- 
 spectors, and auditors ; every line of efficient 
 business employs experts to see that its af- 
 fairs proceed to the end of efficiency and to 
 the elimination of danger and disaster. This 
 is wise ; but such wisdom is merely a stepping- 
 stone to the most important and commanding 
 of all economic wisdom, — we refer to the in- 
 spection of the human machine, to the end 
 that all its parts may occupy their proper 
 positions, and that all its functions may be 
 properly performed, and that the most price- 
 less of all possessions, health, may be con- 
 served. Many of the weaknesses, the disease 
 tendencies, and the small beginnings of dis- 
 ease could be located in this way, removed in 
 their incipiency, and grave troubles be pre- 
 vented. 
 
 A thorough examination by a competent 
 osteopathic physician, the body inspector, 
 would discover the weak spots, the places of 
 least resistance; and their correction and 
 restoration could be speedily accomplished. 
 This would be individual and personal appli- 
 cation of the principles of disease-prevention 
 indeed, and it would afford the truest health 
 insurance. Osteopathic physicians are daily 
 treating patients for the results of strains or 
 
 81 
 
Osteopathy, the Science 
 
 injuries acquired in former years. These 
 strains or injuries have in the intervening 
 time caused diseases, often with permanent 
 tissue changes and incurable after-effects, 
 which might easily have been prevented had 
 the injury been properly cared for immedi- 
 ately after its production. For example, a 
 person with a lesion reflexly affecting the 
 kidneys, could have it removed and, as a re- 
 sultant, escape Bright 's disease; or the re- 
 moval of lesion affecting the vaso-motor cen- 
 ters would prevent that modern bete noir, 
 high blood pressure; or the correction of a 
 lesion affecting the stomach and bowels, 
 would forestall disease from these vital 
 organs. Such examinations would not only 
 lead to the relief of existing troubles but 
 would remove a great part of the liability to 
 others, would increase bodily and mental effi- 
 ciency, make life a joy, add years to one's 
 life, and life to one's years. 
 
 It is a philosophic truism that, "coming 
 events cast there shadows before." These 
 shadows are often the minute tissue derange- 
 ments that are to be located only by the skill- 
 ed fingers of the osteopathic physician, and 
 interpreted only by his reasoned logic that, 
 "mechanical derangements in the body 
 machine are pregnant causes of diseases. ' ' A 
 body machine with all its parts in perfect 
 position, like an inanimate machine, is in a 
 condition to withstand the enormous amount 
 
 82 
 
of Healing by Adjustment 
 
 of wear and tear incident to its daily duties. 
 Derange one part, ever so little, and you have 
 started a destructive tendency, that if uncor- 
 rected, may lead to wreckage and the scrap- 
 heap. If the presence of the derangement 
 be appreciated, and if it be removed before 
 the damage is too great, the human machine, 
 with its wonderful recuperative powers may 
 resume its original state of perfection, and 
 the wreck and the junk-pile will be escaped. 
 Often the hustling business man gives down 
 suddenly and unexpectedly. On examination 
 it is found that there have been in operation 
 for years causes, minute beginning of disease 
 that have so reduced his resistance and 
 vitality that he gave way under some slight 
 strain, through which he should have passed 
 unharmed. These slight and insidious 
 causes acting for a long time have broken the 
 man's health, as the single straw is said to 
 have broken the camel's back. 
 
 In infectious diseases there must be a 
 primary cause antedating the germ invasion. 
 Something must have reduced the vitality and 
 resistance of the affected tissues before the 
 ever-present germs could have become active. 
 The uniformity with which the osteopathic 
 physicians find similar spinal derangements 
 in the majority of cases of typhoid, pneu- 
 monia, tuberculosis, appendicitis, and other 
 diseases, leads to the inevitable conclusion 
 that such spinal derangements, by decreasing 
 
 83 
 
Osteopathy, the Science 
 
 vitality and thus allowing germ invasion, are 
 in themselves the primary causes of these dis- 
 eases. Had these spinal conditions been rec- 
 ognized and corrected, the liability to such 
 diseases would have been correspondingly re- 
 duced. The osteopathic profession does not 
 claim that disordered spinal conditions are 
 the sole and only agencies lowering vitality 
 and permitting germ infection; but they do 
 claim that in a host of cases a disordered 
 spine is the primary agency to this result. 
 
 As public hygiene and sanitation have done 
 much for the masses in preventing diseases, 
 so personal hygiene by removing obstacles to 
 the free flow of the vital fluids and forces, can 
 do much toward preventing diseases in the 
 individual. Many people now go to the 
 dentist periodically as a means of oral 
 prophylaxis. This should be done in order to 
 preserve the teeth, and through them the 
 general health. Yet the possibilities of harm 
 from this source are insignificant as 'com- 
 pared to the possibilities of harm arising 
 from disturbed and neglected mechanical con- 
 ditions in the human body-machine. When 
 this claim is properly appreciated, the osteo- 
 path will be visited periodically, so that the 
 machine may be kept in order, that one's 
 faculties and activities may be preserved 
 alert. Then pain and sickness will be re- 
 duced to a minimum, and the declining years 
 will be years of ease of body and peace of 
 mind. g4 
 
of Healing by Adjustment 
 
 
 OSTEOPATHIC EDUCATION. 
 
 The new treatment, osteopathy, finally be- 
 came so popular that Dr. Still, its originator, 
 was unable to care for all the patients who 
 came to him, and he required assistants. 
 Naturally he first taught to his sons the prin- 
 ciples he had discovered and developed. The 
 demand for practitioners continued to in- 
 crease; others wished to learn the new phi- 
 losophy of healing, and the organization of a 
 school was forced upon Dr. Still. The 
 services of the late Dr. William Smith were 
 secured to teach anatomy and physiology, 
 while Dr. Still surrendered sufficient time 
 from his busy practice to teach the principles 
 by which he had become the master of 
 diseases. 
 
 The first class of about twenty students 
 began in November, 1892. This class was 
 graduated the following year. The course 
 of instruction was crude and incomplete, com- 
 pared with that now required, but from that 
 first attempt has evolved a course of instruc- 
 tion that is second to none in thoroughness 
 and admirable in its comprehensiveness. The 
 first school of osteopathy was chartered in 
 May, 1892. It was housed in an insignificant 
 frame building of one story, only fourteen by 
 twenty-eight feet in dimensions. 
 
 85 
 
Osteopathy, the Science 
 
 Our Colleges are now creditable institu- 
 tions. Most of them have come to own 
 their own magnificent buildings, and all 
 equipped with the most up-to-date facilities 
 for teaching the science of bodily structure 
 and function, and the diseases to which this 
 body is subject. These schools have the most 
 modern laboratory equipment in all their 
 departments, chemical, bacteriological, mi- 
 croscopical, physiological, and pathological. 
 
 We compare the osteopathic with the 
 medical educational standards, not because 
 of invidiousness, but merely because the 
 medical standards are well enough known to 
 render comparison significant. 
 
 The time spent in acquiring a medical 
 education is usually four terms of seven 
 months each. The osteopathic course re- 
 quires, as a minimum, four years of eight 
 months each, and some of the schools give 
 an even more extended course. ]$* 
 
 The American Medical Association re- 
 quires a minimum of four thousand hours 
 work in the four terms. The American 
 Osteopathic Association requires a minimum 
 of four thousand, three hundred and twenty 
 hours of work in the same number of terms, 
 arranged as follows: 
 
 86 
 
of Healing by Adjustment 
 
 Curriculum Required by the American 
 Osteopathic Association. 
 
 Subject Hours 
 
 Anatomy 600 
 
 Physiology 300 
 
 Biology 64 
 
 Pathology 250 
 
 Embryology 60 
 
 Histology 160 
 
 Chemistry 320 
 
 Bacteriology 160 
 
 Hygiene 45 
 
 Dietetics 32 
 
 Principles of osteopathy 80 
 
 Osteopathic technic 160 
 
 Hydrotherapy 16 
 
 X-Ray 32 
 
 Osteopathy, general diagnosis and 
 
 treatment 1200 
 
 Ear, nose, throat 60 
 
 Eye 60 
 
 Surgery 320 
 
 Gynecology 145 
 
 Obstetrics 150 
 
 Jurisprudence 16 
 
 4,320 
 
 From this curriculum, adopted by the 
 Associated Colleges of Osteopathy and 
 approved by the American Osteopathic 
 
 87 
 
Osteopathy, the Science 
 
 Association at its annual meeting of 1916, it 
 will be seen that the Colleges of Osteopathy- 
 are well up to the Medical Colleges in the 
 amount and character of work they give 
 their students. A capable man or woman 
 who receives this course of instruction, 
 having first had at least a High School 
 education or its equivalent, as is now the 
 requirement for entrance upon the study of 
 osteopathy, is fairly prepared to begin the 
 struggle to prevent sickness and restore 
 sick people to health. But less preparation 
 than this is hardly sufficient. 
 
 This seems to be the joint conclusion of 
 the Educational Department of most States 
 and of the osteopathic profession. Medical 
 education is a means to an end — competency 
 and safety for the public. Should not this 
 fact make people careful in employing 
 strange and unlicensed healers? 
 
 The impression that the doctor of medicine 
 is better educated to care for the sick or to 
 give advice in matters of illness than the 
 doctor of osteopathy is erroneous. The sub- 
 jects taught in the two schools are practic- 
 ally the same except that the osteopathic 
 physician, disbelieving the curative power of 
 drugs, devotes little study either to materia 
 medica or to pharmacology. He substitutes 
 for these the principles and practice of osteo- 
 pathy. It does not follow, however, that the 
 
 88 
 
of Healing by Adjustment 
 
 same subjects are studied in the respective 
 schools from the same view-peint, or that 
 their relative importance or application is 
 the same, for it is not. There are at least 
 three points of radical departure from the 
 drug system to be noted in the osteopathic 
 system of healing : first, in the theory of the 
 cause of diseases ; second, in their diagnosis, 
 and third, in the manner of their treatment. 
 For this reason subjects that may be common 
 to the two schools by no means receive tha 
 same method of consideration. 
 
 The subject of anatomy is fundamental to 
 both schools, and yet it is viewed quite differ- 
 ently. To the doctor of medicine it is of 
 general interest and of more especial import- 
 ance because of its bearing upon surgery. 
 The general practitioner of medicine can ad- 
 minister his drugs quite successfully with but 
 a poor knowledge of anatomy. But not so the 
 osteopath. To him anatomy is of vital im- 
 portance because the slightest deviation in 
 anatomical structure is considered by him as 
 a possible cause of disease. He must become 
 thoroughly familiar, not only with the 
 cadaver, but with the living body, so that vari- 
 ations in its structure may be recognized. 
 His ability to recognize and correct these 
 anatomical derangements is the measure of 
 the success of his treatment. 
 
 The doctor of medicine considers germs as 
 the active cause of diseases ; therefore bacter- 
 
 89 
 
Osteopathy, the Science 
 
 iology becomes to him of prime importance. 
 The doctor of osteopathy gives bacteriology 
 due consideration, but to him it is of less im- 
 portance because he believes that germs are 
 secondary causes in most diseases, the pri- 
 mary cause being the condition which lessens 
 tissue resistance and allows germ infection. 
 
 In close relation to the subject of anatomy 
 comes the consideration of osteopathic 
 technic and tactile training. Tactile training 
 really comes first in order. It has no place in 
 the medical course, but in the osteopathic cur- 
 riculm it is indispensable. By this training 
 the sense of touch is so educated that the 
 slightest irregularity in structure or position 
 of the tissues is recognized and interpreted, 
 as are the raised letters distinguished and 
 read by the educated fingers of the blind. 
 The medical doctor denies the existence of 
 these minor derangements because his touch 
 is not trained to appreciate them. It is just 
 as logical for the man with sight to deny that 
 the raised letters or the braille point of the 
 blind have existence. To the osteopathic 
 physician many conditions, meaningless to 
 untrained fingers, stand out as signboards of 
 disease and are of the utmost importance in 
 his diagnosis and treatment. 
 
 Osteopathic technic teaches a skillful execu- 
 tion of the corrective manipulations which 
 are themselves the distinctive feature of 
 osteopathic treatment. It considers the 
 
 90 
 
of Healing by Adjustment 
 
 application of the proper mechanical laws by 
 which the malpositions can best be adjusted. 
 It calls for the most intimate knowledge of the 
 joint structures, not only that their derange- 
 ments may be recognized, but that the 
 mechanics of their normal action and the 
 mechanical principles involved in readjusting 
 them may be observed. 
 
 Pathology in the osteopathic schools em- 
 braces all that is taught as pathology in the 
 medical schools. It has in addition a more 
 extended application and meaning than has 
 ever been taught or appreciated by the medi- 
 cal schools. This broader phase of pathology 
 shows the effects of maladjustments upon 
 near and remote tissues, how and to what de- 
 gree they interfere with the activities of the 
 organs with which they are directly or reflex- 
 ly connected. These effects have been demon- 
 strated by experiments and actual clinical re- 
 sults. 
 
 A course on the principles of osteopathy 
 occupies the place given to materia medica 
 and pharmacology in the medical schools. 
 This is perhaps the most distinctive feature 
 of the osteopathic training. In this depart- 
 ment the underlying principles of the science 
 are unfolded and elucidated, and their appli- 
 cation to the cure of diseases demonstrated. 
 
 Diagnosis includes all the latest medical 
 methods and adds to them the methods that 
 are peculiarly osteopathic. These are espec- 
 
 91 
 

 Osteopathy, the Science 
 
 ially dependent upon tactile training, a fea- 
 ture that is neglected in the medical course. 
 
 It is not to be inferred that because the 
 osteopathic physician does not administer 
 drugs that he is unacquainted with their 
 action. This is taught under the subject of 
 toxicology. It is taught in order that the 
 osteopath may be able to recognize the harm- 
 ful and poisonous effects of drugs, and that he 
 may institute proper treatment for them. 
 
 The medical physician relies upon drugs to 
 effect cure, and gives the scant attention to 
 other curative methods. The osteopathic 
 physician thoroughly investigates the adjunc- 
 tive natural methods for treating diseases 
 and makes use of all those that are efficacious 
 and harmless. Since the call for osteopaths 
 as family physicians is daily growing, a 
 course is given in emergency treatment so 
 that no condition may arise which the osteo- 
 pathic physician is not as well qualified to 
 handle as any other practitioner. 
 
 The urgent and universal demand upon all 
 physicians of the day is the demand for prac- 
 tical experience. This a few of the medical 
 physicians can get by hospital appointments. 
 This need is supplied to the osteopathic 
 student, before he graduates, by extensive 
 clinical practice. Under the supervision of 
 trained clinicians he is supplied not only with 
 the theory but with the practical bedside 
 experience, for here he meets and handles 
 
 92 
 
of Healing by Adjustment 
 
 those cases and emergencies that arise in 
 every day experience. He leaves college 
 thoroughly prepared to do the best thing pos- 
 sible under all conditions of human suffering. 
 
 It is obvious that throughout the entire 
 course in the two schools, the medical and the 
 osteopathic, the view-point and application 
 differ on almost every subject. To the medi- 
 cal doctor the body is a living laboratory in 
 which his remedies effect chemical changes. 
 To the doctor of osteopathy the body is no 
 less a living laboratory, but it is primarily 
 a vital mechanism, upon the structural 
 integrity of which all vital activities are de- 
 pendent. The one gives drugs (usually 
 poisons) to normalize (?) vital activities; the 
 other corrects structure. 
 
 It must now be clear to the unprejudiced 
 mind that the osteopathic physician is the 
 peer of any. He makes his own diagnosis 
 after an examination that is unique in its 
 thoroughness. His knowledge of the body 
 and of diseases is thorough and complete ; his 
 manipulative skill is equal to that of the most 
 dexterous surgeon. His education is thorough, 
 comprehensive and practical. In addition to 
 the latest medical ideas and theories regard- 
 ing the causes, diagnosis and treatment of 
 diseases he has his own distinctive and pecu- 
 liar methods. He rejects only that part of 
 medical teaching that has failed in results 
 and applies instead of these unreliable meth- 
 
 93 
 
Osteopathy, the Science 
 
 ods others that are trustworthy, harmless, 
 scientific and demonstrable. Osteopathy is 
 not something less, but something more than 
 medicine. 
 
 There is no individual talent or accomplish- 
 ment that can not find full expression in the 
 study of osteopathy, and to men and women 
 of proper preliminary education it offers one 
 of the most inviting fields of worthy en- 
 deavor. 
 
 94 
 
of Healing by Adjustment 
 
 OSTEOPATHIC ORGANIZATIONS 
 AND PUBLICATIONS 
 
 The first osteopathic organizations orig- 
 inated from the necessity of self protection 
 and the need of mutual helpfulness. 
 
 The progress of osteopathy from its begin- 
 ning was opposed by organized ' c medicine ' ' in 
 the form of State Boards of Health, County, 
 State and National Medical societies. The 
 individual osteopathic physician was almost 
 helpless against these powerful and influen- 
 tial organizations, and when assailed in the 
 courts would easily have been eliminated 
 from the field of practice if his colleagues 
 had not rallied to his assistance. In this way 
 the first organizations were formed. From 
 these local organizations, many of the State 
 societies grew. 
 
 A preliminary meeting looking to the es- 
 tablishment of a National Osteopathic Asso- 
 ciation was held at Kirksville, Mo., on Feb- 
 ruary 6, 1897. The need of self protection 
 was still present, but the dominant sentiment 
 of this meeting was for the advancement of 
 osteopathy and the establishment of its prin- 
 ciples as the true system of healing. On 
 April 19, 1897, a permanent organization 
 known as the American Association for the 
 
 95 
 
Osteopathy, the Science 
 
 Advancement of Osteopathy was effected at 
 Kirksville, Mo. Annual meetings have been 
 held since this time. At the second meeting, 
 June 29-30, 1898, there was an attendance of 
 almost 200. 
 
 In 1901 the name of this organization was 
 changed to the American Osteopathic Asso- 
 ciation which name it still bears. The Asso- 
 ciation now has a membership of nearly 
 4,000, representing the most progressive men 
 and women of the profession. The attend- 
 ance at the annual meetings has steadily 
 increased until it now averages between 1,500 
 and 2,000. 
 
 The qualifications for membership in the 
 American Osteopathic Association are grad- 
 uation from a recognized osteopathic college, 
 good professional and moral character, com- 
 pliance with the laws and ethics of the asso- 
 ciation and of the State medical practice 
 Acts, and the payment of the annual dues. 
 
 The American Osteopathic Association has 
 the usual officers of organized bodies — a 
 president, two vice-presidents, a secretary 
 and a treasurer. These are elected annually 
 by the members of the association. 
 
 The business body of the association is a 
 board of trustees, eighteen in number, one- 
 third of whom are elected annually. They 
 meet annually before and during the regular 
 meetings of the association. In the interim 
 between the meetings of the board of trus- 
 
 96 
 
/ Healing by Adjustment 
 
 :ees, the business of the association is con- 
 ducted by its Executive Committee of seven 
 chosen from the board of trustees. 
 
 The association has the following standing 
 committees or departments: Education, 
 Publication, Finance and Development, and 
 Public Affairs. 
 
 The last named department has the fol- 
 lowing bureaus under its direction: Public 
 Health, Clinics, Public Education, Legisla- 
 tion, State and National, Statistics, and 
 Publicity. Special committees are appointed 
 as circumstances may require. 
 
 Every State now has a splendid organiza- 
 tion of the profession dedicated to the work 
 of raising the standing and usefulness of the 
 practicians of osteopathy and to the protec- 
 tion of the public from those not qualified to 
 practice. In addition to this in every large 
 city and many district organizations in the 
 populous States there are such organizations 
 holding frequent program meetings. More 
 recently there have been organized clinics for 
 the care of those who cannot pay for treat- 
 ment. In some of the cities the profession, 
 in addition to giving its services to this work, 
 have contributed thousands of dollars to es- 
 tablish and maintain these clinics. 
 
 There are several private sanitariums con- 
 ducted by osteopathic physicians, for it has 
 been noted that sometimes cases which make 
 poor progress while subject to the worries of 
 
 97 
 
Osteopathy, the Science 
 
 business or household cares make splendid 
 recoveries under proper osteopathic care, 
 where diet and habits can be regulated. One 
 such institution for the exclusive care of men- 
 tal and nervous cases has been established 
 within the year and has already shown most 
 remarkable results in supposedly hopeless 
 conditions. 
 
 The Associated Colleges of Osteopathy was 
 organized in 1898. The object of this organi- 
 zation was to regulate, unify and combine the 
 reputable colleges of osteopathy in order to 
 elevate the standards of osteopathic educa- 
 tion. Attracted by the success of the gradu- 
 ates of the legitimate colleges of osteopathy, 
 many correspondence schools, diploma mills, 
 and other specimens and pseudo schools were 
 organized. In order to protect themselves 
 and the public, the schools that were consist- 
 ently and conscientiously endeavoring to 
 teach thoroughly the true principles of osteo- 
 pathy, originated this organization. It meets 
 annually or oftener, and has been a powerful 
 agency in developing the present high stand- 
 ard of osteopathic education. 
 
 At the annual meeting of the National As- 
 sociation July 2-4, 1901, the necessity for an 
 official organ was recognized. This need was 
 met by authorizing the publication of the 
 Journal of the American Osteopathic Asso- 
 ciation. This journal was to be chiefly scien- 
 tific in character. It was to contain the pa- 
 
 98 
 
of Healing by Adjustment 
 
 pers read before the association and the dis- 
 cussions arising from them ; official communi- 
 cations, contributed articles, items of general 
 news interest to the profession, reports of 
 legislative activities, reports of State asso- 
 ciations, judicial matters, etc. 
 
 The journal was originally a 48 page 
 monthly publication. It has steadily grown 
 until it now contains twice as many pages and 
 takes front rank among the best scientific and 
 professional journals of any school of prac- 
 tice. 
 
 The desirability of some medium to present 
 all phases of osteopathic interest and activi- 
 ties to the laity was recognized at the meet- 
 ing of the National Association in 1913, and 
 the publication of the Osteopathic Magazine 
 was authorized. It is the official organ of the 
 osteopathic profession to the laity. Its mis- 
 sion is to deepen and broaden the common 
 conception of osteopathy and its activities. 
 It primarily presents the claims of osteo- 
 pathy as a therapeutic agent, but in addition 
 to this presents it in its relation to other 
 therapeutic measures as well as to every 
 movement or agency that tends to the better- 
 ment of the human race. 
 
 It discusses from the osteopathic viewpoint 
 the questions of hygiene and sanitation as 
 related to public health. It aims to aid in all 
 reforms that contribute to the health and 
 happiness of the people, and to oppose all 
 
 99 
 
Osteopathy, the Science 
 
 unjust and arbitrary exercise of authority in 
 matter of health regulation, that violate in- 
 dividual rights. It gives practical and use- 
 ful advice in matters of diet as well as in 
 personal hygiene and sanitation. It presents 
 the distinctive contributions of osteopathy to 
 the science, not only of curing but of prevent- 
 ing disease. It serves the purpose of a useful 
 and practical health magazine. It is pub- 
 lished from the general offices of the associa- 
 tion at Orange, N. J. The subscription price 
 is $1.00 per year. The Association also pub- 
 lishes several high class health brochures, 
 viz: "Why I go to the Osteopath," "That 
 Machine You Call Your Body," ''Childhood, 
 the Period of Preparation," etc., copy of 
 any one of which may be had by sending 
 five cents for postage to the above address. 
 
 Besides these magazines there are several 
 others, privately owned, with circulation 
 running to many thousand copies monthly. 
 
 Some score or more of osteopathic text- 
 books have been written and published by 
 members of the profession both for use of 
 the student in college as well as for the phy- 
 sician in the field. These cover the subjects 
 of Anatomy, Physiology and Surgery from 
 the osteopathic viewpoint, as well as many 
 works based on practical experience as in the 
 treatment of certain diseases, as diseases of 
 children, the peculiar diseases of women, as 
 well as the field of general practice. 
 
 100 
 
of Healing by Adjustment 
 
 THE PRESENT LEGAL STATUS OF 
 OSTEOPATHY 
 
 The laws regulating the practice of the 
 Healing Art, prior to the discovery of osteo- 
 pathy, had been framed either directly by the 
 doctors of medicine or through their influ- 
 ence. These laws gave to organized medi- 
 cine autocratic powers. Osteopathy originat- 
 ing as it did after the passage of these laws 
 had no legal status. As soon as it began to 
 be generally practiced, the medical profes- 
 sion invoked the aid of the existing laws, 
 those of its own making, to suppress it. The 
 public had no where appeared against it, but 
 always in its favor. The conception of the 
 cause of disease and the form of treatment 
 were so radically different that there could 
 be no confusion of the two systems by the 
 public, so that the opposition by the medical 
 organizations took on a not disinterested 
 aspect. So different is the system, and so 
 biased the medical profession, that after 
 more than twenty years of successful oste- 
 opathic practice most medical men ridicule 
 the idea of minute vertebral derangements 
 and their operation as a cause of disease and 
 of their correction as the logical cure of 
 disease. 
 
 101 
 
Osteopathy, the Science 
 
 Many osteopathic physicians were arrested 
 for practicing "Medicine" without a license 
 and were haled before prejudiced medical 
 boards for trial. These boards at once as- 
 sumed all of the powers of the judiciary and 
 became prosecutors, witnesses, jury and 
 judges. The rank injustice of such arrests, 
 their obvious animus and the farcical nature 
 of such trials were apparent to all thinking 
 people. 
 
 Unable to secure a fair hearing of their 
 cause before the medical autocracy, the osteo- 
 paths appealed to the public sense of justice. 
 They asked the aid of the people in securing 
 the passage of just and equable laws that 
 would guarantee them the pursuit of their 
 practice without molestation. 
 
 Against the attempt to pass such laws, 
 organized medicine presented the most deter- 
 mined opposition, so that in several States 
 the passage of such laws as would free the 
 osteopaths from the domination of medical 
 influence was prevented for years. 
 
 Many people of national prominence volun- 
 teered to testify to the merits of osteopathy 
 and to plead its cause. The osteopathic phy- 
 sicians have never asked for special privi- 
 leges, but have merely desired to develop and 
 grow unhampered by the interference of an 
 antagonistic school of practice. They have 
 made more rapid progress in scientific and 
 educational development than any other sys- 
 
 102 
 
of Healing by Adjustment 
 
 tern of treatment, and claim as their right 
 the opportunity to continue such advance- 
 ment to meet their own needs. 
 
 Osteopathic legislation has made great 
 progress, yet it is not all that we desire. Our 
 ideal is for each State and country to have 
 an independent board of examination and 
 registration for osteopathic physicians, and 
 for osteopathy to have equal legal recogni- 
 tion with other systems of practice. 
 
 In the following twenty-one States this 
 ideal has been attained: Arkansas, Con- 
 necticut, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, 
 Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, 
 Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, 
 North Dakota, North Carolina, Pennsyl- 
 vania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, 
 Saskatchewan. 
 
 The following States have osteopathic 
 members on the regular medical boards of 
 examiners: California, Colorado, Arizona, 
 Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Okla- 
 homa, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Virginia, New 
 York, New Jersey, Washington, Wisconsin, 
 Wyoming. 
 
 Four States have osteopathic committees 
 or especially appointed representatives act- 
 ing with the medical boards of examiners: 
 Ohio, Delaware, Rhode Island, West Vir- 
 ginia. 
 
 In four States, osteopaths are examined 
 and licensed by the regular medical boards: 
 
 103 
 
Osteopathy, the Science 
 
 Alabama, Illinois, Iowa, South Carolina. 
 
 Osteopathy is exempted from the medical 
 act in Maine and New Hampshire. 
 
 Three States permit osteopathy but do 
 not authorize nor prohibit its practice: 
 Mississippi, Nevada, District of Columbia. 
 
 Osteopathic physicians have secured favor- 
 able laws in several of the provinces of Can- 
 ada and are practicing without molestation 
 in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Swe- 
 den, France, Germany, Mexico, Italy, South 
 America, Japan, India, Africa, and the 
 Hawaiian and many other islands. 
 
 Osteopathy has not only proven its worth, 
 but its superiority as a system of treatment; 
 it has demonstrated its ability to more suc- 
 cessfully cope with the needs of the sick than 
 any other practice; it has shown that it pos- 
 sesses all that is of proven value in other 
 methods together with its own distinctive 
 merits, and we entreat of all lovers of fair- 
 ness and justice to aid us in securing such 
 legislation as will free us from the interfer- 
 ence of prejudiced influence. 
 
 It is just as detrimental to progress and 
 freedom in the healing art for one shcool of 
 practice to have supreme power as it would 
 be in the religious world for one sect to be 
 dominant. 
 
 104 
 
of Healing by Adjustment 
 
 IMITATIONS OF OSTEOPATHY 
 
 The fundamental principles of osteopathy 
 are, and have always been, THE ADJUST- 
 MENT of the structures of the human body, 
 more particularly those of the spine because 
 the spine offers more opportunities for mal- 
 adjustment than any other part of the body. 
 
 The application of these principles has 
 been remarkably successful in the treat- 
 ment of diseases, in many instances mar- 
 velous and spectacular results have been 
 secured. Because of this a number of im- 
 itations and counterfeits of osteopathy 
 have arisen. 
 
 The poineers in the development of 
 osteopathy had two courses open to them. 
 One to develop osteopathy into a scientific 
 and thoroughly dependable school of prac- 
 tice with the highest standards for its 
 physicians; the other to heed the voice of 
 commercialism, expedience and greed and 
 allow it to degenerate into a low class 
 money making scheme and to send out as 
 many ill-trained and inefficient practitioners 
 as they could in the least possible time to 
 prey upon an unsuspecting public. 
 
 In the beginning a spirit of avarice and 
 cupidity did possess a few and manifested 
 itself by the organization of a few short 
 course colleges and correspondence schools. 
 This spirit was not allowed to hamper the 
 
 105 
 
Osteopathy, the Science 
 
 
 profession nor to prevent its development 
 along the highest scientific and educational 
 lines. The profession soon purged itself of 
 these renegades by declaring a relentless 
 war upon such institutions. The sole pur- 
 pose of these institutions was to make money 
 out of gullible students who were made to 
 believe that the mere knowledge of a few 
 movements makes one an osteopathic phy- 
 sician or at least something just as good. 
 Disowned by the osteopathic profession 
 whose basic principles they had purloined, 
 but whose name they were not allowed to 
 use because of the high standards estab- 
 lished by it, some of these coined new names 
 for the principles of osteopathy and under 
 these the fakirs and charlatans have multi- 
 plied and the spirit of greed and commer- 
 cialism has had full rein. They have suc- 
 ceeded in many instances in deluding some 
 well intentioned individuals into the belief 
 that they could acquire the requisite knowl- 
 edge to treat and care for diseases of the 
 human body by a course in correspondence 
 or by a resident course of a few weeks or at 
 most a few months; a fraction of the time, 
 in fact, that is necessary to qualify in 
 plumbing, brick-laying, carpentering, or 
 any similar trade. 
 
 The osteopathic profession has consist- 
 ently demanded and maintained high ed- 
 ucational qualifications for all who would 
 
 106 
 
of Healing by Adjustment 
 
 enter it. It demands of its practitioners an 
 exhaustive and complete knowledge of the 
 structures of the human body as a pre- 
 requisite to its adjustment and a similarly 
 thorough knowledge of diseases, their mani- 
 festations and the changes they produce in 
 the tissues, as a preliminary to their care. 
 Besides this, manipulative skill is necessary 
 and this is impossible without a knowledge 
 of the anatomy of the part to be manipu- 
 lated. Adjustment may be secured in two 
 ways, by skillful painstaking and by brute 
 force. A shoulder or a hip may be dis- 
 placed or out of adjustment and may be set 
 or adjusted skillfully and without damage 
 or it may be forced in place by brute force, 
 regardless of the accompanying damage. 
 In the more delicate parts, as the spinal 
 joints, attempted adjustment without ade- 
 quate knowledge of the structure may cause 
 severe and irreparable injury. 
 
 It is readily seen that the acquisition of 
 the necessary knowledge to be an osteo- 
 pathic physician is no "correspondence 
 school" matter but is a serious task of four 
 years and an amount of work that exceeds 
 that of many of the class "A" medical 
 schools. Less than this is inadequate to 
 prepare one to care for human ailments, and 
 less than this cannot? guarantee the protec- 
 tion to the public against inefficient and 
 dangerous practitioners. These are the 
 
 107 
 
Osteopathy, the Science 
 
 requirements of the American Osteopathic 
 Association and membership in this body is 
 an endorsement that the holder thereof is 
 the peer of any physician of any school of 
 practice. 
 
 Of these so-called schools who seek to 
 profit by the reputation that osteopathy 
 has earned may be mentioned "spinology," 
 "endopathy," "naprapathy," "menchano- 
 terapy," "neuropathy," "spondylotherapy," 
 "chiropractic" and perhaps others as new 
 ones seem to be born daily. 
 
 "Spondylotherapy" is merely a tail to the 
 medical kite and is practiced for the most 
 part by medical doctors. "Chiropractic" is 
 of all these counterfeits the most arrant. 
 The chief requirement it makes of its grad- 
 uates is the price of a diploma which may 
 run from a few dollars to a few hundred. 
 Requirements of preliminary education, if 
 discussed, are merely the ability to read and 
 write and the correspondence courses are 
 recommended.* 
 
 These imitators shrewdly though fraud- 
 ulently claim that their methods are funda- 
 mentally different from osteopathy and 
 improvements upon it. This claim is 
 absurd. The mere change in the design of 
 a table for treating a patient or a particular 
 movement in adjusting an abnormality can 
 not change a principle. One might as well 
 
 "Harper's Weekly, April 3, 1915. 
 
 108 
 
of Healing by Adjustment 
 
 argue that a change in the design of a chair 
 or a different movement in pulling a tooth 
 changed the principles of dentistry The 
 chief reason for such a claim is that they do 
 not wish to brand themselves as counter- 
 feits. Again in nearly all of the States 
 there are laws maintaining high standards 
 for osteopathy. To the lowest of these 
 standards this class can not reach, therefore, 
 they claim to be different so as to escape the 
 operation of just laws for the protection of 
 the public against ignorant pretenders, who 
 if they do not actually injure the body, as 
 has often been done, may prevent the pa- 
 tient from receiving skillful and efficient 
 treatment. 
 
 The care of the sick is a responsibility that 
 should not be lightly entered into and 
 certainly not without due preparation. 
 
 One would scarcely trust the care of an 
 automobile to a chauffeur whose training 
 consisted of a few correspondence school 
 lessons, yet there are some who have sub- 
 mitted their bodies to the ministrations of 
 these self-styled "doctors" whose education 
 and training is much less than that of the 
 average mechanic. We would not deny that 
 there may have been instances in which 
 they have done good, for the principles of 
 osteopathy, even though crudely and igno- 
 rantly applied, are potent for good. This 
 fact by no means implies that they are safe 
 
 109 
 
Osteopathy, the Science 
 
 and reliable caretakers of the body in the 
 crisis of disease. 
 
 The safety of the sick demands that those 
 who profess to heal should not only know 
 what to do but what not to do. Greater 
 danger often arises from doing the wrong 
 thing than from ignorance of the right thing 
 to be done. The human body is too deli- 
 cate, complicated and important a mech- 
 anism to be tampered with by any class 
 of uneducated impostors. 
 
 These facts are given that the reader may 
 be able to discriminate between the true 
 and the false, the genuine and the imita- 
 tion. The suggestion is made that before 
 submitting to the treatment of any doctor, 
 real or so-called, that his credentials be 
 investigated and his record inquired into. 
 This is merely the part of wisdom and 
 safety. 
 
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