Osteopath

“ An Osteopath who does not understand the general law of tumefaction of the whole system is not excusable from the fact that tumefaction, disease and death are so plainly written on the face of all diseases that the blind need not have eyes to see, nor the philosopher any brain to enable him to know this foundation is the highest known truth of all man's intellectual possessions. ”

“ NATURE'S CHEMISTRY.
Osteopathy believes that all parts of the human body do work on chemical compounds, and from the general supply manufacture for local wants; thus the liver builds for itself of the material that [Pg 41] is prepared in its own division laboratory. The same of heart and brain. No disturbing or hindering causes will be tolerated to stay if an Osteopath can find and remove it. We must reason that to withhold the supply from a limb, to wither away would be natural. We suffer from two causes. ”

“ Such is not my object, but to place the Osteopath's eye of reason on the hunt of the great whys that the knife is useful at all, I am sure it comes often to remove growths and diseased flesh and bone that have [Pg 155] gotten so by man's ignorance of a few great truths. 1st, If blood is allowed to be taken to a gland or organ, and not taken away in due time the accumulation will become bulky enough to stop the excretory nerves and cause local paralysis; then the nutrient nerves proceed to construct tumors, and on and on until there is no relief but the knife or death. ”

“ The Osteopath denounces the Chiropractor as a brazen fraud who has stolen all that is good in Chiropractics (if there is anything good) from Osteopathy. But Chiropractics follows so closely what the “old liner” calls the true theory of Osteopathy that, between him and the drifter who gives an hour of crude massage, or uses the forbidden accessories, the true Osteopath has a hard time maintaining the dignity (?) of Osteopathy and keeping its practitioners from drifting. ”

“ I have seen some of the best Osteopaths treat wry-neck, and the work they did was to knead and stretch and pull, which by starting circulation and working out soreness, gradually relieved the patient. A hot application, by expanding tissues and stimulating circulation, would have had the same effect, perhaps more slowly manifested.
To call any Osteopathic treatment massage is always resented as an insult by the guardians of the science. What is the Osteopath doing, who rolls and twists and pulls and kneads for a full hour, if he isn’t giving a massage treatment? ”

“ Thus to study well the frame work of the chest should be with the greatest care. Every joint of the neck and spine has much to do with a healthy heart and lung, because all vital fluids from crown to sacrum do or have passed through heart and lungs, and any slip of bone, strain or bruise will affect to some degree the usefulness of that fluid in its vitality, when appropriated in the place or organ it should sustain in a good healthy state. To the Osteopath, his first and last duty is to look well to a healthy blood and nerve supply. ”

“ If not it will fail to execute its part for want of power—for by it all blood must move. These nerves are found in plexuses in all parts of the body; they are abundant in the skin, fascia, muscle, lymphatics and all organs great and small. The Osteopath must know or learn that no infringement can be tolerated in any part. Nature's demands are surely absolute, and require that the last farthing shall be paid in full. Now for a start—we will explore the neck ”

“ The Osteopath reasons if he reasons at all, that order and health are inseparable, and that when order in all parts is found, disease cannot prevail, and if order is complete and disease should be found, there is no use for order. ”

“ If truth always grows under persecution, how can the American Medical Association kill Osteopathy when it is so well known by the people?
Nearly four thousand Osteopaths are scattered in thirty-six States where they have some legal recognition, and they are treating thousands of invalids every day. If they are performing the wonderful cures Osteopathic journals tell of, why are we told that the welfare of the system depends upon the noise that is made and the boosting that is done? ”

“ Ten years hence no sane man will call a doctor except when the knife must be used—& such cases will be rare. The educated physician will himself be an osteopath. Dave will become one after he has finished his medical training. Young Harmony ought to become one now. I do not believe there is any difference between Kellgren's science and osteopathy; but I am sending to America to find out. I want osteopathy to prosper; it is common sense & scientific, & cures a wider range of ailments than the doctor's methods can reach. ”

“ A good masseur handles the muscles very much as do the Osteopaths. Circulation is the object in both cases: If you want to hurt an Osteopath's feelings, just tell him that he is a fine masseur. For, has he not spent three years at an Osteopathic College to learn his art, whereas the masseur may have learned his the previous week from some Turkish bath operator? Please remember that the Osteopath is a physician, and that he knows as much about anatomy and therapeutics as do other physicians. ”

“ It is no answer to say that in many instances the diagnosis is easy,-that a man knows it when he has a cold or a toothache. For a general practice science is needed. An osteopath undertakes to be something more than a nurse or a masseur, and the difference rests precisely in a claim to greater science, which the state requires him to prove. ”

“ An Osteopath to successfully treat flux or [Pg 147] bloody dysentery must reason and address his attention first to the soreness and irritation of bowels, which he finds suffering with œdema of mucous membrane of all the glands and blood vessels belonging to the lower bowels. As quiet is the first thing desired, he will direct his attention to the sensory nerves of the colon and small intestines, in order to reduce the resistance of the veins and diminish the arterial action. ”

“ Osteopaths immediately proceed to reassure the sufferers that their affection is not rheumatism, but some local condition dependent upon either a subluxation of the vertebra which, according to the founder of osteopathy, constitutes the basis of ninety-five per cent. of all the ills to which human nature is heir or upon some joint or muscle condition which can be corrected by manipulation or massage. ”

“ No part is so small or remote that it is not in direct connection with some part or chain of the lymphatics. The doctor of Osteopathy has much to think about when he consults natural remedies, and how they are supplied and administered, and as disease is the effect of tardy deposits in some or all parts of the body, reason would bring us to hunt a solvent of such deposits, which hinder the natural motion of blood and other fluids in functional works, which are to keep the body pure from any substance that would check vital action. ”

“ Then, as its production is by the skill of a foreigner whose education has grown to suit the work, we must silently sit by and willingly receive the work when handed out for use by the producer. At this point I will say that an intelligent Osteopath is willing to be [Pg 152] governed by the immutable laws of nature, and feel that he is justified to pass the fluid on from place to place and trust results. ”

“ The Osteopath has great demands for his powers of reason when he considers the relation of diseases generally to the pelvis; and this [Pg 215] knowledge he must have before his work can be attended with success. ”

“ Most healers have too narrow vision. People come to them because they have faith. The faith alone will produce temporary improvement, but as soon as the interest is gone and the procedure grows old the patient becomes worse again unless the treatment possesses genuine merit. Osteopathy is most excellent, as a part of a healing system, but it is not sufficient. The osteopaths find their patients relapsing over and over again, or taking some other disease. ”

“ There has been many a tragic scene enacted upon the Osteopathic stage, but the curtain has not been raised for the public to behold them. How many timid old maids, after saving a few hundred dollars from wages received for teaching school, have been persuaded that they could learn Osteopathy while their shattered nerves were repaired and they were made young and beautiful once more by a course of treatment in the clinics of the school. Then they would be ready to go out to occupy a place of dignity and honor, and treat ten to thirty patients per month at twenty-five dollars per patient. ”

“ In conclusion, Osteopathy is much overestimated by some, and much underestimated by many. It will do good to most anybody, and harm to nobody. It will cure thousands of cases that the regular physicians cannot cure; but, on the other hand, there are thousands of cases that Osteopathy should not attempt to cure without the aid of the modern school of physicians and surgeons. ”

“ Where Osteopathy has always been so administered that people have the idea that it means to find things out of place and put them back, it is a gentleman’s job, professional, scientific and genteel. Men have been known to give twenty to forty treatments a day at two dollars per treatment. In many communities, however, the adjustment idea has so degenerated [Pg 116] that to give an Osteopathic treatment is no job for a high collar on a hot day. ”

“ When I saw others who had not more than skimmed the surface of the science, taking up the pen to write books on Osteopathy, and after having carefully examined their productions, found they were drinking from the fountains of old schools of drugs, dragging back the science to the very systems from which I divorced myself so many years ago, and realized that hungry students were ready to swallow such mental poison, dangerous as it was, I became fully awakened to the necessity of some sort of Osteopathic literature for those wishing to be informed. ”

“ Osteopathy attempts to specialize the mechanical principle in dealing with all kinds of curable diseases, acute as well as chronic, graduating pressure, tension, vibration, and all the mechanical forms of physical stimulation, in their application to muscles, bones, blood-vessels, nerves, and organs of the body, so as to gain therapeutic effects. ”

“ When Osteopathy is practiced as a combination of all manipulations and other natural aids to the inherent recuperative powers of the body, it will appeal to reason in such a way and bring such good results as to make and keep friends.
I am fully persuaded, and I believe the facts when presented will establish it, that it is the physio-therapy in Osteopathy that wins and holds the favor of intelligent people. But Osteopathy in its own name, taught as “a well-rounded system of healing adequate for every emergency,” has grown and spread largely as a “patent medicine” flourishes, i. ”

“ Osteopathy is defined as "that science or system of healing which treats disease of the human body by manual therapeutics for the stimulation of the remedial forces within the body itself, for the correction of misplaced tissue, and for the removal of obstructions or interferences with the fluids of the body, all without the internal administration of drugs or medicine." ”

“ Several years ago, being in ill health, her attention was directed to osteopathy as offering some hope of restoration. The results were so favorable that she with her husband took up the study at the Northern Institute of Osteopathy, in Minneapolis, Minn., and after finishing the course they each received the degree of Doctor of Osteopathy. In 1897 they located themselves in Boston for the practice of their profession. Here Mrs. Achorn is a pioneer in her work, being the first woman to engage in the practice of osteopathy in New England. ”

“ I had now tried upwards of fifteen different methods for the cure of my stammering. I had tried the physician; the surgeon; the elocution teacher; the hypnotic specialist; the osteopath; a clairvoyant; a mail-order scheme; the world's greatest speech specialist—so-called, and several other things. My parents had spent hundreds of dollars of money trying to have me cured. They had spared no effort, stopped at no cost. And yet I now stammered worse than I had ever stammered before. Everything I had tried had been a worthless failure. ”

“ The journal printing this article comments on it in another number; tells what a great man the specialist is, and incidentally lets Osteopaths know that if any of them want to add a knowledge of “orificial surgery” to their “complete science,” this doctor is the man from whom to get it, as he is the “great and only” in his specialty, and is big and broad enough to appreciate Osteopathy.
The most despicable booster of any new system of therapeutics is the physician who becomes its champion to get a job as “professor” in one of its colleges. ”

“ There is a large percentage of failures in other professions, and it is not strange that there should be some in Osteopathy. But when Osteopathic journals dwell upon the large chances of success and prosperity for those who choose Osteopathy as a profession, those who might become students should know the other side. ”