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

Old theories

Old theories give but little if any useful knowledge for our day and generation. They are mostly like a last year’s drunk would be to this year’s happiness to an Irishman’s stomach. They may have been good for old drunks but they are too tedious and tasteful for our boys and girls.

I tell you they were old drunks and very poor drunks too. They were watered to death by talk, with no object but to talk old theories, and like peacock tails they look well in the spring of our lives, but they fall out feather at a time, babies pick them up feather at a time but lose them just as fast, even babies know they are too long, that is American born babies.

Why should we bother with the dead theories? Why call the student’s mind from his study? Hasn’t he got the bones in his hands? Let him look, reason and adjust till he finds he wants help, then do so if you can. He calls you to tell the place and use of some bone – tell him and show how and why a bone has such shape, don’t drop him into the quagmire of old theories. Man is a machine and must be studied to know how and why it does its work. You should and must ever remember that Osteopathy is a science that pertains to active, healthy man, and to know him you must acquaint yourself with his form and motion by study and contact. How much would an engineer know of an engine by theories drained from Thomas Benton, Henry Clay and Lewis Cass, for and against Morse’s telegraphy, or Fulton’s steam engine delivered in congress. These great men asked the great statesmen for wisdom and help, they were insulted by blackguarding and being called fools. The stone they stood on was individual knowledge.

A.T. Still
Journal of Osteopathy, July 1900

Traduction en français de cet article