The philosophy and mechanical principles of osteopathy / by Andrew Taylor Still.

  • Still, A. T. (Andrew Taylor), 1828-1917.
Date:
1902
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The philosophy and mechanical principles of osteopathy / by Andrew Taylor Still. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

    34/330 (page 28)
    enjoy themselves in the field of usefulness for which they were created. The same of the fish. The same law is equally applicable to the human being. If the fish should change place with the bird, it would surely die and become extinct. The same law would be applicable to the bird. That element that sustains animal life belonging to each is abundantly supplied and dwells in its peculiar environment. The same law of extinction would be equally forcible should the bird try to dwell in the waters of the seas. Let us make the ap- pHcation of this crude base of our philosophy, and make a few changes for the convenience of reason. Suppose we should move the heart up to the cranial cavity and the brain down to the place now occupied by the liver, and the liver to the position of the lungs, and place the lungs on the sacnun; what would you expect but death to both fowl and fish? Thus the practical osteopath must be very exacting in ad- justing the system. He must know that he has done his work right in all particulars, in that the forms, great and small, all through the body, must be infinitely correct, with the object in view, that the necessary fuel and nutriment of life that is now in the hands of Deity may be adjusted to the degree of perfection that it was when it received the first breath of individualized life. Osteopathy is built upon the principle of debtor and creditor. We must willingly credit Nature with having done its work to perfection in all the machinery and ftmctions of animal life, and that the after-results are good or bad accord- ing to centers and variations. If we observe any variations from the normal center, our work is never complete nor the reward due us until by adjustment we have reached the normal. We know our responsibility, and should labor to render a just account, and willingly submit our work to the anatomical critic.