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
Cause
Each person to get good results and improve from day to day must hunt for cause, then operate with a view to change the cause that has produced such condition, by change of currents of blood to nourish and wash away such accumulated bulks, by correcting bones and giving easy discharge to venous blood, that it may absorb and carry off deposits from joints, muscles and membranes. A goitre is only what blood has failed to be used by the nutrient nerves. Conditions not symptoms are what an Osteopath has to contend with. When he goes to a patient he asks for knowledge of conditions; he starts in with pictures of a body in healthy condition in his mind, and searches for variations from that standard. Thus an arm on one side when compared with the other arm must be the same in size, strength, motion and temperature, with the same color. A cold arm, blue in color and much larger than the other arm would present a condition that would be unnatural in form, motion, blood and venous action. Thus we see and feel a condition that is grave in its effect on health and motion. We must reason for cause, why this blood did stop and swell a part, and why it does not go on and reduce such swelling to its original size. At this time reason would take the exploring eye and searching hand to the bone structure, feel, look and compare all joints, in search of slips or variations from centers of actions; also search closely for impacted, twisted or overlapped and crossed muscles or ligaments, that would press on or across a nerve, vein or artery, and stop their normal work.
The Osteopath has the condition before him all the time; also all symptoms, but the cause is the mystery that has produced the condition and when found he will find a mechanical cause for all the trouble he is likely to meet. Would we be safe in saying all diseases of climate and seasonal conditions with contagions are the results of local causes? When we meet fever have we not found a condition with cause in fermentation of fluids of lymphatics of the whole system and those of the superficial fascia more than the deep seated, because of contact with atmospheric air? Then as we know the condition why not enter the combat at once, and remove cause of suspension, and labor for restoration of normal action? First by arteries, next the veins, then the excretory system.
The Osteopath’s acquaintance with the nerve and blood supply, their local and general uses are sufficient guides if wisely conducted with that attentive perseverance that is due in treating diseases, which is nothing more nor less than the conditions produced by confused and perverted nutrition and renovation. Thus symptoms banish in quick succession from distress, to recovery. We would admonish the operator to give attention to conditions, this is all important to his success. His eye and hand are very trustworthy as his microscope and thermometer, and more so and more useful in the sick room than all artificial appliances. Nature has provided and armed us with all that is necessary to explore for and locate cause, and successfully treat all diseases of climate or any season of the year. I have spoken thus freely to draw the student’s and practitioner’s mind to more attention to conditions, and treat accordingly; and less attention to our customary routine of name hunting before treating according to the rules laid down in authors on symptomatology.
A condition not normal is found in all diseased persons. That condition may have many symptoms common to other diseases, which would require much care and long acquaintance with books and observation to classify the name properly the disease according to the rules of popular symptomatology, which often fails to know smallpox from chickenpox, measles, scarlet fever and on through the many thousands of blunders made in giving names and treating according to such rules. Thus the importance of an operator dealing with conditions when he would wish to know the cause, and treat by the more safe rules of reason. A limb or division of the body can not show an abnormal condition without the producing cause being close by. The same law is just as true of pneumonia, flux, typhoid and other fevers; you find the patient in a condition and you have been called to get him out of such condition, your duty is to find the cause of the bad condition, seek and know where the cut off is, and what will relieve that person. You are not any wiser to know the Latin, Greek or Choctaw names for such and such diseases, unless you are a pill doctor. Symptomatology leads you straight to a drug store. Conditions point you to cause hunting and finding, and just what to do to relieve the sufferer in the hour of need. Let the subject of conditions be your universal starting point and not hunting names. We should honor symptomatology because it is a relic of the visions of the stupidity of the kinds of literature that legislatures are called on to protect from deadly shots of bitter truths, that have come to stay and abolish unsound theories from the earth.
A.T. Still
Journal of Osteopathy, May 1900
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