PART TWO
OSTEOPATHY
CHAPTER VII.
SOME DEFINITIONS AND HISTORIES.
Romantic Story of Osteopathy’s Origin—An Asthma Cure—Headache Cured by Plowlines—Log Rolling to Relieve Dysentery—Osteopathy is Drugless Healing—Osteopathy is Manual Treatment—Liberty of Blood, Nerves and Arteries—Perfect Skeletal Alignment and Tonic, Ligamentous, Muscular and Facial Relaxation—Andrew T. Still in 1874—Kirksville, Mo., as a Mecca—American School of Osteopathy—The Promised Golden Stream of Prosperity—Shams and Pretenses—The “Mossbacks”—“Who’s Who in Osteopathy.”
The story of the origin of Osteopathy is romantic enough to appeal to the fancy of impressionists. It is almost as romantic as the finding of the mysterious stones by the immortal Joe Smith. In this story is embodied the life history of an old-time doctor and pioneer hero in his restless migrations about the frontiers of Kansas and Missouri. His thrilling experiences in the days of border wars and through the Civil War are narrated, and how the germ of the idea of the true cause and cure of disease was planted in his mind by the remark of a comrade as the two lay concealed in a thicket for days to escape border ruffians. Then, later, how the almost simultaneous death of two or three beloved children, whom all his medical learning and that of other doctors he had summoned had been powerless to save, had caused him to renounce forever the belief that drugs could cure disease. He believed Nature had a true system, and for this he began a patient search. He wandered here and there, almost in the condition of the religious reformers of old, who “wandered up and down clad in sheep-skins and goat-hides, of whom the world was not worthy.” In the name of suffering humanity he desecrated the grave of poor Lo, that he might read from his red bones some clue to the secret.