I started a collection of texts from old osteopathic journals that could be of interest to osteopaths and people curious about osteopathy.

You can fin the full list here
Some were translated into French here

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What can osteopathy give?

What can Osteopathy give us in place of drugs? is a great question which the doctor of medicine asks in thunder tones. Tell him to be seated and listen to a few truths and questions. “What can you give us in place of drugs?”

We have nothing to give in place of Calomel, because Osteopathy does not ruin the teeth nor destroy the stomach, liver, or any organ or substance in the system. We cannot give you anything in place of the deadly Night-shade, whose poison reaches and ruins the eyes, both in sight and shape, and makes tumors great and small. We have nothing to give in place of Aloes, which purges a few times and leaves you with unbearable piles for life. We have nothing to give in place of Morphine Chloral, Digitalis, Veratrum, Pulsatilla, and all the deadly sedatives of medical schools. We know they will kill, and that is all we know about them. We do not know that they ever cured a single case of sickness, but we do believe they have slain thousands. We cannot give anything that will take their places. Their place is to ruin for life; and Osteopathy considers life too precious to place its chances in jeopardy by any means or methods.

In answer to the inquiry, “What can you give us in place of drugs?” I will say, we cannot add or give anything from the material world that would be beneficial to the workings of a perfect machine—a machine that was made and put in running order according to God’s judgment—perfect in the construction of all its parts, designed to add to its own form and power day by day, and to carry out all exhausted substances that have been made so by wear and motion .

If this machine is self-propelling, self-sustaining, having all the machinery of strength, all the thrones of reason established, and working to perfection, is it not reasonable to suppose from the amount of wisdom thus far shown in the complete forms and workings of its chemical department, its motor department, the nutritive, the sensory, and the compounding of elements, that the Master Mechanic has provided the avenues and power to deliver these compounds to any part of the body, and to make by the newly compounded fluids any change in the chemical quality that is necessary for renovation and restoration to health?

When we see the readiness of the brain to supply sensation and motion, and are notified of an unnecessary accumulation at any point of the body by sensation or misery, we want removed that over-accumulation which is making in-roads on life through the sensory ganglia, to all its centers. We know when fully possessed by diseased fluids the fort of life must yield to the mandates of death from climatic or diseases of the seasons as they come and go.

If life yields to the poisonous fluids that are generated during detention and chemical changes, why not conclude at once that the motor power is insufficient to keep in action the machinery of renovation through the excretory system? Reason proceeds at once to reach the oppressed points. Through the vasomotor being irritated the venous circulation becomes so feeble as to allow diseased fluids to accumulate, locally or generally, through the system to such a length of time that they become deadly in their nature from the power of separation being overcome and lost.

Osteopathy reasons that the special or general power of all nerves must be free to travel through all parts of the body without any obstruction which may be caused by a dislocated bone, a contracted, shrunken or enlarged muscle, nerve, vein or artery. When enlarged or diminished they are abnormal in form and action.

If you have a thorough and practical acquaintance through Anatomy and Physiology, with the forms and workings of the machinery of life and health, and treat it as a skilled physiological engineer, then you are prepared to say to the doctors of medicine, “We have found no place in the whole human body where you can substitute anything but death in place of life.” Remove all obstructions. All means ALL, intelligently done to completion, and nature will kindly do the rest.

Let me in conclusion ask the drug doctor if he has been able at any time to compound substances that can be introduced into a vein that leads to the heart, and not produce death? Do you not throw all substances into the stomach with the expectation that the divine chemical laboratory will throw out that which is incompatible to life? Are not all your hopes placed upon this one foundation, that we make the horse of life trot slower for fever, and walk faster in the cold stage? In short, Doctor, is not your whole theory based upon guess-work?

Nature’s God has been thoughtful enough to place in man all the elements and principles that the word “Remedy” means.

A.T. Still
Journal of Osteopathy, August 1897