Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1909-03-04
IRONTON. MO. THURSDAY, MARCH 4, 1903
Osteopathic Catechism.
from osteopathic Healthy


> THY.
Q. What theory, essentially new
to medical science, has osteopathy
established to be the common
cause of disease?
A. Mechanical disorder within
the organise. Mal-adjustment of
parts, particularly of the bony
framework of the body upon which
all the soft structures are sup
ported, any slight deviation of
which from its correct position
and alignment may cause pressure,
strains, congestion, pains and in
terruption of work in the local,
softer parts-the nerves and blood
channels-that thereby become
blockaded. Advanced thinkers in
medicine have now gotten so far
as to affirm that ''structural defect"
is first necessary to produce fune-
tional alterations; but abnormal
tiles in relationship, defective ad-
justment and faulty proportions,
in a word, "bad" mechanics as the
initial point of this faulty structure
has not somehow appealed to
them.
Q. What brings about such me-
chanical disturbances in the body
in other words, what causes
sickness?
A. The ordinary wear-and-tear
of life; the innumerable incidents
and accidents to which everybody
hourly is liable. These may be
grouped, VIZ:
(1) Falls, jars, blows, wrenches
and other forms of force expended
upon the body from without.
(2) Strains, wrenches, twists
and immediate displacements from
over-exertion, such as lifting or
spasmodic effort to recover from
falls or avoid threatened injury
force acting within the body.
(3) Contractions of muscles,
fascias and ligaments, from talk
ing cold, draughts, dampness, ex-
posure, over-exertion, etc. These
mechanical disturbances, osteopa-
thy has now fully demonstrated,
are first in Importance in upset.
ting health, in producing, sooner
or later, ills functional or struct-
ural, acute or chronic, "medical"
or surgical" Osteopathy has
thus added a new class of disturb
ances to the science of pathology,
to-wit: The very commonest of all
the real first cause of disease.
Q. Are mechanical disturbances
the only first cause of disease?
A. By no means. Hardly less
important are the abuses of func-
tion from overwork in local parts
of the body, such as result, for in
stance, from eating or over
drinking. An organ may break
down from overwork when it has
an average nerve and blood sup
ply. Heredity adds an important
predisposition determining the
quality and quantity of nervous
energy and their alterations.
However artiticially induced me-
chanical ''lesions" corporate with
functional overwork and heredi-
tary weakness much oftener in
producing disease, we believe,
than heredity acts Independently.
@, Has any other school of
medicine recognized such mechan-
ical disorders as causing disease?
Az Absolutely no. 1t seems
to have been entirely f forgotten by
other physicians that higher life
exists and its nutrition proceeds
upon the basis of mechanics as
we'll as chemistry. Physicians
welded to materia medica and
surgeons to their operations, do
not by their work admit, as class,
this common-sense proposition.
How handicapped they must be in
consequence in attempting to di-
agnose and remedy bodily defects
clearly due to these hidden me.