Just how much cross over was there at the formation of Chiropractic with Osteopathy?

Who was the first osteopath to wear orthotics and what on earth is a saint’s rest?

These are some of the questions that I had answered with my recent trip to the home of osteopathy, The Andrew Taylor Still University, Kirksville, Missouri.

As any good student of osteopathy will know Dr Andrew Taylor Still discovered osteopathy in 1874 and opened his first school, the American School of Osteopathy in 1892.  What they might not know is that school still exists both literally and figuratively.

The initial school house has been preserved and brought to the museum of osteopathy in Kirksville.

Ironically it sits inside a massive building which is the ‘offsping’ of that original school and now runs full medical courses, dental courses and a whole host of human science courses.

The purpose of my trip to the osteopathic ‘mecca’ was two fold; Firstly wanted to see the museum and learn more about the founder of my profession and secondly I had the opportunity to take some continued education with the US trained osteopathic physicians.  Both were great experiences but I’m going to focus here on what we discovered in the museum…

Ok, I know that most people like a picture or two so I’ll through a few in here.

AT Still suffered from headaches a boy.  He noticed that he could relieve them if he strung his father’s plough line between two trees, much like a modern slack line, and rested the back of his head on it. Lying on it like this would traction the sub occipital muscles and possibly the upper cervical complex and provide relief from the headaches.  For the rest of his life he made his patients portable devices that could produce the same effects, he called them Saint’s Rests. He had two versions, a leather one, top right and a wooden one that appears to be more focused.  See the photo of one of team trying it out.

Still’s Orthotics

They might seem like a modern fad but recently the museum made an interesting discovery when looking at pair of Still’s boots.  These boots fly round the world going to exhibitions etc and it occurred to the museum that it would be prudent to have a copy of the boots in case some airline lost them in transit.  The boot maker they hired to make a duplicate pair quickly noticed that the there was something in them that didn’t need to be there.  He reached his hand in a pulled out a pair of leather orthotics or orthoses as one of my old tutors kept reminding me.  What’s interesting about Still’s orthoses is that they have the medial section removed, the very part that most people feel as though they need, to give them arch support.  The working theory is that Still once suffered from Typhoid which affected his balance.  He then created these orthotics to drive his foot into more pronation which would give him greater stability and therefore better balance!

History of Chiro and Osteo

This has always been a contentious subject, did D.D. Palmer, the founder of Chiropractic ‘steal’ osteopathy?  What we know is that osteopathy had been around for while (1874) before Chiro came on the scene 1896.  We have eye-witness accounts of Palmer coming to Kirksville with a student of the first class of osteopathy (Struthers) in 1892, receiving treatment and spending some time there.  In the year prior to starting the American School of Osteopathy, Still trained up some local Doctors to help him as class room assistants, one of those Doctors was A P Davis.  Interestingly he was also one of the first graduates of Palmer’s school of Chiropractic.  All this just says that the two systems had some intermingling at the beginning, but the most interesting statements come from a MD that partnered with Palmer to make one of the early schools named the Palmer Gregory school of Chiropractic in Chicago.   In 1912 Gregory wrote a book entitled ‘Spinal Treatment, Science and Technic’ in the introduction he states;

‘Palmer who obtained his first ideas of spinal lesions from an osteopath by the name of Struthers…we find no evidence that he (Palmer) was the discoverer, but find facts to the contrary.  Palmer being an uneducated man it has fallen to the hands of others to develop the science.’

Now, this could be the ramblings of a disgruntled business partner, but it does corroborate the link with Struthers.  OK, so what?  Does it make any difference?  Not really, but I just like to dig into these things a little further than what most schools of osteo or chiro tell their students which is ‘there was no contact between the two modalities in the beginning’.  Take it or leave it, I thought it was interesting.

Osteopathic Technique teaching in the US

I’m not sure what I expected to find at the oldest school of osteopathy, part of me wanted to see wooden treatment tables and old time gentlemen in Victorian dress walking round the technique tables with copies of Grays and parts of a skeleton.  It wasn’t like that.  In fact it was the opposite.  The actual technique room was huge.  The instructor was on a stage in the middle of the room and he had cameras pointing at him from every angle which would then project the image of the technique onto 4 massive screens.  Although initially impressive I found that I was just too far away from the action, and trying to learn a physical skill from a 2D image somehow didn’t work for me, but it was a good experience nevertheless.

There is not much to see in the town of Kirksville but if anybody interested in the history of osteopathy wants to go there I highly recommend the museum.  Jason Haxton, the director there is a wealth of knowledge and would be only too pleased to show you around!

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