Abstract.

On December 22nd 1917, Andrew Taylor Still was laid to rest. He was born 89 years earlier in 1828. His father, Abram Still, was a religious missionary, his mother, a god-fearing women, from the frontiers, a natural preacher’s wife whose own family had been once been enslaved by the native Indians.
Andrew Still, dedicated his life to “gods perfected world” and studied nature in all its wonder.

His formative years were spent following his family around the planes of Missouri. Schooled both at home and at various institutes until the age of 20, he continued with two of his brothers to attend the sick and needy by his father’s side.

In 1848 he married Mary Margaret Vaughan and had five children by her, three were lost to illness and Mary herself died in 1855. Andrew remarried within the year to another Mary who was the daughter of a New York Physician.

He joined the war effort for three years, in a time when as many men died from disease as they did fighting.

After leaving the army he felt men were enslaved more than ever to the medications provided and found his own brother James was a morphine addict. In 1864, a further three of his children died and he spiralled into a depression. He moved towns and encountered spiritualism, mesmerism, phrenology, hygiene and Darwinism.

After a ten year search, countless anatomical dissections, working as a doctor and bone setter he felt he had discovered the essence and working of man. The preachers denounced him and his family for suggesting anyone but god knew how man worked and forced his family to move once more. They landed in Kirksville, Missouri. The conflicts which ensued in his mind against the evangelical teachings of the church and the physicians advocate of quinine and whiskey tore at his foundations of belief. On the 22nd of June 1874 at the age of 46, after a life time of the Church, farming and medicine, he states he was shot with an arrow charged with philosophy, and divorced himself from the world of drugs, Osteopathy was born.

Still, constantly wandered the streets, attending the sick near and far. In 1891 three patients asked him to teach them Osteopathy. Within 10 years there were 13 schools of Osteopathy in the United States graduating 600 students per year. The number of osteopaths in the United States 100 years later (1990) is approximately 30,000. The growth can be explained as we delve deeper into the discoveries he made and the motivation behind the man.

Today, Osteopaths are found in all European countries, some African states, Australia, New Zealand and Asia. From the humble beginnings in Kirksville Missouri, an international system of diagnosis and treatment has ensued. 

This talk will take your through the life of Andrew Taylor Still and the beginnings of Osteopathy. (482 words)