Osteopathy was first developed by Andrew Taylor Still (1828-1917), an American doctor, and son of a physician who travelled pioneering America during a period where epidemics caused repeated large-scale tragedies.
Dr Still became acutely aware of the lack of medical knowledge of disease. His first wife died in childbirth, 3 of his children died in a menigitis epidemic in 1864 and a fourth child died of pneumonia shortly afterward. These personal tragedies convinced Dr Still that medical practices of the day were inadequate and inspired him to conduct his own research into disease.
He was particularly struck by the fact that, during the repeated epidemics of his time, some of the population remained healthy, whilst others sickened and died.
His research led him to identify the human immune system as an important factor in a healthy individual, and developed his system of osteopathy based on a thorough knowledge of anatomy and the view that the best approach to treatment of disease was treatment of the body as a whole, rather than to focus on specific symptoms or a specific “diseased part” of the body.
Dr Still opened the first school of osteopathy in Missouri in 1892 and made a number of notable contributions to medical knowledge, including:
Cranial osteopathy is an extension and development of osteopathy advanced by William Garner Sutherland, DO (1873-1954)
Sutherland discovered the very slight rhythmic movements displayed by the bones of the skull, the spinal cord, and the fluids and membranes surrounding the brain and spinal cord.
These rhythms of the central nervous system were, he discovered, discernable by touch, and carried significant information about the health of an individual.
He described these pulsations as the “Primary Respiratory Mechanism”-with 5 major features: