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
Preparatory studies essential
What books and studies are necessary to a complete education in the science of Osteopathy? is a question to which I have given much thought, and after a quarter of a century in this work I have reached the conclusion that every successful operator should fully understand Anatomy, Physiology and Chemistry. Your knowledge of these three books and the principles which they teach must be thorough. When I say Anatomy, Physiology and Chemistry, I mean if you fully understand these branches you are a star of the greatest magnitude.
I want to ask you if you have ever taken the time since you entered the classes to think of the length, breadth and depth of the meaning of these words? Do they not imply a perfect house, builded by a competent builder—a Being who knew what was needed to make a house fully equipped with the machinery for all demands of the spirit that was to dwell therein?
What would you say of a brag architect, who had the name of being a wise and faultless builder, who would say, “Your house is completed,” and hand over the keys; but when you tried to fire up the furnace you should find he had left it without a smoke-stack? Would you think he knew anything about excretions? You would not, or you are ignorant of that part of Anatomy that treats of renovations. Did he put in a water-closet, with tubes running to it from all parts of the house? If you do not know, look at your Anatomy; start at the bladder, and follow all openings that run to it, from the brain to the soles of the feet, by that renal law of drainage which you find in the porous system of man and beast.
Before you receive a house you should go into all the rooms, try the doors, windows, closets, lights and ventilations, from foundation to roof. That is your duty before you receive the building.
You must be well versed in Anatomy, or you cannot judge the plumbing. You must understand it, or you cannot truthfully say that the house is well braced. Without it you cannot tell what foundation the house of life is builded on. You must know the shape, place and use of every piece that belongs to the whole superstructure.
By the bones you learn the frame-work. By the ligaments you find how carefully and exact the bones are fastened, each to all others. By the study of the blood vessels you learn the channels of supply and renovation. By a knowledge of the origin and insertion of muscles and tendons you understand their uses in manipulations as a machine of motor and locomotive power. By study of the fascia and synovial membranes you see why one muscle can glide over, under or around others and not irritate the harmony by friction. You get to the skin, which is the roof and weather-boarding of the whole house, with millions of pores to ventilate and purify by excreting impurities.
Open your book and behold the brain, which runs all the machinery of force, to carry on all the duties required to make and keep the man normal in all parts and principles. The brain is his power of wisdom and strength, which runs analytical chemistry, preparing and blending all kinds of matter to be applied in the building, with the wisdom found in the Biology of the association of the living with the dead matter, which takes on itself life for hours and days, as wisdom commands.
You see, if you can see at all, that life comes to a man as a skilled chemist fully endowed with force to do, and wisdom to select and shape, atoms suited to construct nerve and blood channels to supply strength and material to build man or beast—wisdom which is present and in working order at all times in all beings. It plans and forms each part to suit all other parts of the being it constructs. It takes the material of crude nature in its arms, and that is all we know of it until we see bone and muscle, clothed with life and form to suit the place for which it is intended.
This is the chemistry of man, made for him; and all other systems of chemistry have but little claim on him as a market for their products. The Osteopath who goes into the world with the idea of Chemistry attached to him as useful to help the Divine chemist that is in your brain, blood and battery of life, is only a boy who ties rags to rags to make his whip long and does not know it will wind around his little head when he wants to “pop.” He needs the rasp of intelligence to rub his scaly eyes until he sees in man a fully equipped being from the mind of God, supplied with chemical, biological and all other machinery that man or beast needs, or all he could ask for if he had the mind and skill of God himself.
Does God know how to make and equip man? If he does, all you are required to know is how to keep the engine lined, fired and oiled; it will run its miles without any of your dopes or suggestions. Study the normal, and keep man in that chair, and you have run the length of your mental rope.
In all time past man has felt and acted as though the Creator had provided all things for him that he could ask or desire but one, and that was what to do or take when sick. We have lived under the tradition that man is made sick as a punishment for a few apples that Grandma Eve took, and has never been well since. I wish she had let them alone, if that was all she knew about the chemical and biological effect of stealing apples.
One says: “Do you object to the study of elementary chemistry?” Not at all, if you have not studied it previous to entering our school. I think it will help you very much to begin to think of the wonderful chemical laboratory that is eternally at work in man. This chemistry is less understood than any branch of Nature, and its workings for life and health are more to be admired than all other blessings bequeathed to man. An atom cannot have a welcome place in man if it has not had its fitness and purity passed upon at the school of life and truth, of which God is chief chemist.
Chemistry is a branch of our scientific literature that is unlimited in its variety and benefits to man. It begins and shows us the affinities and antagonisms of all known elements.
It is a guide to all our fine arts. Beginning with earth, through all its products, man is the crowning work of the skill and wisdom of all Nature, and halts to see the beautiful workings of that unequaled laboratory of life, as it operates in him. No equal stands on record to date. He is not only refined to the least atom of his form, but his atoms of body are more refined and better adjusted to a higher plan and plane than all other forms of animal life. It had to be made and kept so, as the duties he had to perform were to control the world and all its elements by reason. Therefore all the machinery must be higher in form and quality to suit the coming demands. Thus we are warranted to reason that the department of chemistry in man is greater and more effective; that from crude material to the throne of reason, with power to select and purify previous to construction, by all rules of reason, he must be of a higher order of matter, skill and knowledge.
You should study and acquaint yourself with chemistry, as you are now preparing to go into the world as adjusters of the machinery of the chemical and physiological laboratories of life as a profession. You should understand the chemistry of the fine arts, that you may be more able to know by comparison the uses and what to expect in the economy of man and beast. All nature lives by chemical action, and you should arm yourself with a useful knowledge of all that pertains to man by analysis, comparison or otherwise.
A.T. Still
Journal of Osteopathy, August 1897
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