The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1914-08-13
BIRTHDAY OF DR. STILL
 FATHER OF OsTEoPATITY.

This is red-letter day for practt- tioners of the new healing art of os- teopathy, for 1t marks the eighty-sixth anniversary of the birth of Dr. An drew Taylor Still the father and founder of the science.
 s Dr. Still was regular physician be- fore he attained fame as a lightning bone-setter,'' and founded new school which now has over 1000 practitioners all over America. He was born near Jonesboro, Lee county, Virginia. His father, Abram Still. was a Methodist preacher and circuit rider. The fam fly moved with it's worldly belongings in two wagons, to Macon county, Mo, and here the founder of osteopathy grew up in the rough, healthy pioneer atmosphere. From the first he had a passion for anatomy. and the skele- tons of the possuIn, coons and wild cats shot by him in the woods were carefully articu1ated and studied on winter evenings.
 Shortly after his admission to the practice of medicine pr. still Joined the Northern Army and served through the civil war as surgeon in the Twen- ty-f1rst Kansas cavalry and after it's conclusion was post surgeon at the Shawnee reservation in Kansas. It was here that the study of the human bone structure, especially of the spine, was forced upon him by the tragic death of his two little daughters, one after the other, of spinal meningitis. It was in 1874, when living at Baldwin, Kan, that he abandoned traditional l medical routine altogether, and began to practice osteopathy as it is under stood today.
 Dr. Stills theories were scoffed at by most of the medical men of that day, and his methods of introducing the new system were novel and occa- tsionaIly spectacular. Stories are told l of his Jumping up into hay carts and l performing his cures in the center of an admiring crowd called together by lthe news that the lightning bone-set- 1 ter'' was at work. or of his stopping old negro women on their way to work and correcting anatomical faults that he had noticed with his back against a board fence. His dress. too. helped l his reputation for eccentricfty. consist
 ing, as it did, of a fur cap, high rub I Der boots, jumper and overalIs. l Hostility on the part of local doctors l and denunciations from the pulpit o1 the Methodist churches. to whom he I had just given a grant of land of 47
 acres, drove Dr.. Still out of Baldwin in a year.
 I From there he went to Kirksville l Mo. now the headquarters of the os- Iteopathfc medical school, and started his first classes with six students. 1r
 one room of frame cottage outside 1 the town. Tn this early work he was |
 William Smith, a graduate of Edin.
 burgh Medical University. who was
 travelling in the United states for hi. l health and had seen the lightning
 bonesetter''. and his two sois at work The history of osteopathy was ons
 of steady progress. It had the 1ucl
 to coincide with a gradual abandon
 ment on the part of the best doctor.
 of wholesale use of drugs in theil
 practice and a return to natural meth
 ods of cure. A good deal of it's meth
 cd was recognized as being sound iron the first, whatever might be though
 of it's sweeping condemnation of drugl
 and it's claims to cure diseases sucl
 as cancer and tumors in their advanced
 stage. These have been and still ar
 resented by the regular faculty.
 The warfare against osteopatay rag
 ed mostly around the claims Of it
 graduates to practice medicine w1thou
 a regular degree.