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A.T.Still - the founder of osteopathy

Andrew Still - the founder of osteopathy

(A brief curriculum vitae)

Andrew Still was born in 1828 in family of the priest and the congressman in the city of Kirksville (USA).  

He received medical education and worked as a surgeon during the Civil War.

Still's controversial notion of medicine made him to break with medical school and to develop his own therapy methods. 

He studied various ways of medicine, including medical practices of the North  American Indians. For his studies of anatomy and pathology Still performed an autopsy on more than thousand bodies. 

Still starts a successful practice of treating with hands. He applied his method mostly to infectious diseases like diphtherias, meningitis, typhus.  Still gave the new treatment the name of osteopathy. Osteo - listen, pathia - pathology. 

After having aquired some solid experience Still opened the fist school of osteopathy in Kirksville. His teaching goal were not the concrete techniques, but the main principles of osteopathy. He always stressed the main principle was the knowledge of anatomy.

Still shaped the rule of arteries - where the blood flow is obstructed, a disease appears. He taught to apply the knowledge of pharmacology, psychology, herbal treatment. To form his theory he also used physics, mechanics and knowledge of resistance of material. People, who eye witnessed his treatments, told he always used only gentle, non-traumatic techniques.