The science of osteopathy : its value in preventing and in curing disease / by J. Martin Littlejohn.

  • Littlejohn, J. M. (John Martin)
Date:
[1901]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The science of osteopathy : its value in preventing and in curing disease / by J. Martin Littlejohn. 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.

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    several systems upon whose uninterrupted functional activity the con- tinuance of life depends, these two are those over which we have most mechanical control, and it is by mechanical means that we can obtain a considerable and important therapeutical effect in certain unhealthy states of the heart and lungs. In regard to the application of mechanical treatment, he adds that in this way the strain upon the impoverished tissue is diminished and its vitality prolonged. In addi- tion, the effect of continued movements upon elastic and muscular tissues, provided undue effort is avoided, is to develop them. BASIS OF OSTEOPATHY. Here we have the statement that mechanical movements give us an increased functional activity and an increased nutrition. If we add to this the facts that physiologically nerve stimulation may be pro- moted, blood and lymph circulation freed, and obstructions taken out of the way by mechanical means, so as to free the nerve force, the blood, the lymph, and the peristaltic niovements of the tissue, we have the fundamental basis of Osteopathy. DEBT TO MEDICAL RESEARCH. We owe a debt of untold gratitude to predecessors who have tilled the fields of anatomy and physiology, both normal and morbid, and made it possible for us to apply the principles of Osteopathy with precision and definiteness to the human system. The principle of Osteopathy is a time-honored one, similia similibus curantur, in the ''sense that the only rational and scientific method of curing disease is based upon nature. Nature has won victories in other fields. In the field of education, nature won a victory in discarding the old system of cramming and making education the stimulation of mental develop- ment by the skillful communication of knowledge by nature's method. Nature can do the same in the field of medicine; by removing every- thing that is unnatural, it can permit recourse to the perfect medicine laboratory of life, out of which the soothing draughts of nature flow to diseased parts. THEORY OF DRUG ACTION. Allbut, in his system of the Practice of Medicine, makes this state- ment, We give drugs for two purposes: (i) To restore health directly by removing the sum of the conditions which constitute disease. Here we act empirically with no definite knowledge—often indeed with little idea of the action of our drugs. (2) To influence one or more of the several tissues and organs which are in an abnormal state, so as to restore them to or toward the normal. This purpose we effect by means of the influence which the chemical properties of the