The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-06-09
From the Fra.

From the Fra.
 TSoR ten years past I have been in- terested in osteopathy. This be- x gan with my meeting old Doctor Still. the founder of the science.
 Doctor still is now in his s4th year. He has been a praetlcing country physician since his twentieth year.
 There is no college degree equal to the all-around experience of a country doctor. provided he keeps his eyes wide open and does not fall into a rut-which the aver age man certainly does.
 If anybody is a genius 1t Is the man who is filled with an eternal discontent and an undying hope.
 Doctor Still was the original first citizen of Missouri. He is the man who first demanded visual demonstration. He Is the man who said, Show mel Also, he is the man who went ahead and showed the world a good many things it never knew before.
 We work from the complex to the sim pie; and the obvious is the last thing we learn.
 When Doctor still was 50 years of age he came to the tOfltiuo4biA ih1N eiAN - medicine was a science of guesswork.
 The healing principle Is in Nature. We are part of Nature Nature is on our side and she is doing her best all of the time to keep us well.
 Pain is the result of a remedial en- deavor on the part of Nature to bring about a change for the better. Also, pain ie a beneficent warning. The old-time method of silencing pain by sedatives and lotions was based on a wrong principle.
 For instance, doctors used to give nor nhine to stop pain. The effect of nor phine is to dead sensibility, not only in the afflicted part of the body. but also throughout the entire system.
 have seen morphine given in cases of sciatica and lumbago. and there Is no doubt that it stopped the pain.
 It also stopped the action in the entire alimentary tract. And always and forever where morphine is given it has to be fol- lowed with another drug in order to pre- vent killing the patient through malnutri- ton
 So one drug always calls for another and thus the patient not only has to hsht the disease. but has also to fight the erect of the drugs and thereby is his resiliency or resisting power lowered. And when you reduce a patients vitality, other compli- cations enter and his chances of recov- cry are much diminished.
 To retain all of ones vitality is the one desirable thing to do.
 Osteopathy holds that health Is the most natural thing in the world, and its every effort is to move in the line of nature and take advantage of the laws of nature
 Naturally. osteopaths lose caste with the regular practitioners. Every good thing in the world has to heht for it's life. Every innovation is opposed.
 The average man knows only the things that he has memorized. Initiative, origi- nality and progress are painful proposi- tions.
 But inasmuch as the founder of Osteo- pathv was a graduate of a regular school of medicine, 1t was not possible Tor the jealous ones to deprive him of the privi- lege of practicing in his own way.
 But when some of his young men. who were not graduates of regular colleges, sought to treat disease by manipulations, brinaing about right adjustment of the tissues 90 as to bring the patient into his confidence, studied the cause, saw where the individual lapsed in his living and thinking and acting, and endeaVoreu not only to put his anatomy in right re- ,ationship. one part to the other. but en- deavored to place the man in right rela- tionship to the world, in. a mental and spiritual way.
 Soon patients who had been given up bv the regular physicians were coming to pr. Still.
 Dr. still was .'old," even in middle age. This expression is complimentary rather than otherwise. It suggests wisdom and the ripened reason that goes with long experience. It suggests that the man is not hot after success as the average youth is, but that he is sedate and sea- soned.
 And so the sick came in wagons, OK carts. hayracks They were carried on stretchers or limped on crutches, for the idea had gone abroad that pr. Still pos sessed the Healing Touch.
 Just what the Healing Touch is I do not know; neither does pr. Still.
 But I am inclined to think it is some thing like this: the average man is very Iundeveloped creature. and instead of thinking with his whole body. as it is possible to do. he thinks. if at all, just with his sky piece. He gets other people to do his work. and his hands serve him, at the best. simply as bread hooks. The good osteopath thinks with his hands.
 Dr. still was a workingman. = He made his llvng with his hands. He could gar Ssn. farsn. and caxs fer animals. He