# Representative women of New England/Ada A. Achorn

​ADA ALEXANDER ACHORN, D.O.- Mrs. Achorn was born in Juda, Wis., March 1, 1861. Her father, George Washington Alexander, of Scotch-Irish descent, was born in 1821 in Columbus, Ohio. In 1835 he removed with his father's family to Indiana. Her mother, whose maiden name was Ruth Little, was born in 1823 in Oxford, Ind.
Mr. and Mrs. Alexander migrating to Iowa a few years after the birth of their daughter Ada, she was educated in the public schools of that State. At the age of seventeen she began teaching school. This vocation she followed successfully until her marriage to Clinton Edwin Achorn, which took place at Cherokee, Iowa, January 10, 1882. Mr. and Mrs. Achorn have one son, Kendall Lincoln Achorn, born October 20, 1882. He is now a Senior in the Lawrence scientific department of Harvard University.
For several years Mrs. Achorn was enthusiastically engaged in temperance work among young people, she being in the Independent Order of Good Templars, to her the best of all organizations for its purpose, which she many times worthily represented in district and State sessions, and in which she still holds membership. She did her first temperance work as a member of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and she belonged to that society until her entire time was needed for her practice. She is a member of the Woman's Relief Corps, E. O. C. Ord Corps, No. 105, Department of Iowa, which she repeatedly served in the capacity of treasurer, secretary, and president. She also belongs to the Daughters of the American Revolution, Dorothy Dix Chapter, Waltham, Mass., deriving her title to membership through her descent from Joseph Alexander, her father's paternal grandfather, who enlisted at Simsbury, Pa., and served under General Putnam in the Revolutionary War. He was a private and afterward successively Ensign, Lieutenant, and Captain of Pennsylvania troops.
As a natural outcome of experience in other social organizations, she became a leading member of the Political Equality Club of her home town, and had the honor to serve on the committee which arranged the programme for the first celebration of "Foremothers' Day" ever held in the country.
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. In June, 1897, when the Boston Institute of Osteopathy was organized, she became the secretary and treasurer and one of its instructors, and she has been actively identified with that institution to the present time.
She is a member of the American Osteopathic Association and of the Massachusetts Osteopathic Society. She re])resented the Boston Institute of Osteopathy at the sixth annual meeting of the American Osteopathic Association, held in Milwaukee, Wis., August 6, 7, 8, 1902.
On account of its recent introduction the science of osteopathy is allowed a few words of explanation in these pages.
The following paragraphs are copied from an address delivered by .1. Martin Littlejohn, Ph.D., LL.D., F.S.Sc, and F.R.S.L., Diplomate in Osteopathy, before the Royal Society
​in London, and first printed in the Journal of the Science of Osteopathy of February, 1900:—
"Osteopathy was first formulated by Andrew T. Still, M.D., in 1874. He claimed that a natural flow of blood is health; that disease is the effect of local or general disturbance of the blood; that to excite the nerves causes the muscles to contract and compress the venous flow of blood to the heart; and that the hones could be used as levers to relieve pressure on nerves and arteries.
"The name Osteopathy was applied to the new science on account of the fact that the displacement of bones occupied the first place in the category of causes or lesions producing diseased conditions. . . . The underlying factor is that of body order and physics developed in connection with animal mechanics. . . .
"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." It "repudiates drugs as foreign to the organism."