Osteopathic Distinction Mary Goldman D.O. November 2016
Credits and study leads Many book excerpts from John Lewis, D.O., British author of (the biography) A.T. Still, From the Dry Bone to the Living Man Slides from AOA OMED, Charles Beck, D.O., FAAO should be accessed on the AOA OMED site at https://www.osteopathic.org The following quotes may be covered in the first lecture, but may not be in order note source listed in slide notes, which may be viewed in Power Point normal view
Osteopathy is: First and foremost a philosophy which guides reasoning about health and disease Embraces all verifiable scientific facts, challenges the ultimate authority of science, declares materialistic suppositions unsatisfactory when applied to the living being Based on observable, spiritual, truth unexplained by any known scientific law: nature strives inexorably to express health
Osteopathy is: Nature: Nature understood as a union of the Knowable and Unknowable: body, mind and the spirit of life united by a law beyond human comprehension blended by the wisdom of the Deity. Whereas allopathic medicine tries to control nature with limited knowledge, osteopathic medicine encourages listening humbly, learning from, and harmonizing with the superior knowledge of nature
The Introduction to Osteopathy: The first class of Kirksville received this intro: The first step in Osteopathy is a belief in our own bodies. The next step is to advance that belief to an intelligent understanding. You will learn that the body is selfcreative, self-developing, self-sustaining, self-repairing, self-recuperating, self-propelling, self-adjusting, and does all these things on its own power. Osteopathy: --Is not a system of movements --One must delve and dig for it themselves --Its application to the patient must be given by reason and not by rule.
Contrast other medicine practices with Osteopathy: --similar symptoms dictate treatment versus similar symptoms might have entirely different anatomical causes --treatment by protocol versus individualized treatment decided by reasoning after a search for mechanical cause --treatment guided by prescription versus principles: cause and effect and nature s inexorable drive to express health --focus on materialism versus focus on anatomy (which includes physiology, histology, and biochemistry) --prevention by procedures and education versus powerful prevention and curative powers by strengthening host (every lesion places a burden on vitality, immunity and powers of recovery)
The Art of Osteopathy 1. We must learn to communicate and cooperate with natural laws, not framed by human hands. 2. The science of Osteopathy emerges from the art as one observes the order and meaning of natural laws expressed over and over in a variety of patients. The repetition of landscapes reveals the laws.
Biodynamics: James Jealous Many of my teachers in Kirksville made the statement, all you do is begin a treatment, then the indwelling therapeutic forces finish it. The goal, of engaging an indwelling therapeutic, process is the hallmark of our tradition.
Every Drop Knows the Tide Treating the parts to rebuild the whole is a scientific fallacy. It cannot be done. The function of wholeness is necessary for the development and healing of the parts. Life reaches the parts through the whole. When we sense the whole and it is refreshed the parts are realigned and nourished.
Study Sharing with a group of fellow travelers is what grows this profession. It is what sustains the Truth that slowly unveils itself from generation to generation. The older Osteopaths love to see the younger take the reins and ride ahead.
Osteopathic Principles The body is a living, breathing, dynamic organism that has all the resources and capacities necessary to do what it needs, if you can get it into a physiological balance by working with it and utilizing the organism s own resources.
Basic concept Structure determines function; function determines structure
Osteopathy has wide application: The science of osteopathy is not confined to the manipulative group of specialists. It is possible for every discipline of specialist to learn the fundamental principles of the total concept of osteopathy and apply them clinically in their respective fields of service.
Dr. D.O., Why Dig On? Osteopaths must be able to give a reason for the treatment that they give, not so much to the patient, but to themselves.
How to best learn to diagnose and how to treat: 1. To learn to feel function, to think function, and to know function with anatomical physiology is not an easy art and skill for the physician to develop. 2. To learn this art it is essential to place one s own fingers aside those of the instructor and follow along with him in the touch, in the how, and in the after.
Self-healing capacity 1. All His works, spiritual and material, are harmonious. His law of animal life is absolute. So wise a God had certainly placed the remedy within the material house in which the spirit of life dwells. 2. This assertion was supported by two commonsense observations: few, if any diseases were invariably fatal; and people were capable of recovering from most diseases without a doctor s help. The human body, he intuited, contains every sort of drug that the wisdom of God thought necessary for human happiness and health.
Why the Rule of the Artery? I reasoned that disease, which is really a fractional death must be due to a partial cessation of the blood stream from some mechanical obstruction to the artery or vein of the organ primarily affected.
Cause and Effect The cardinal principle for adjusting or repairing any mechanical devise was cause and effect: trace back from the fault to its underlying source. Did similar mechanical principles apply to the human body? Did structural derangements produced by strains, injuries, postural stresses or other factors irritate nerves, alter circulation, disturb physiology and therefore, by definition, cause disease? revolutionary idea: to cure disease, treatment should be addressed not to physiology but to anatomy.
Spiritual versus Physical forces Health and disease could be regarded as the interaction of two opposing forces: spiritual forces generating order; material forces physical derangements generating disorder.
Definitions: MATTER= the body s anatomy and physiology, and behind it the unknown laws governing the creation of form. MIND= rational thought, memory, imagination and intuition, and the hidden wisdom of the body that orchestrates trillions of cells in one common expression. MOTION=SPIRIT= not only movement and all physiological and mental processes but also the body s unseen animating power.
Still s discussion of Osteopathy 1. About 1889, Still discussed Osteopathy with Bill Smith, who would teach anatomy in his new Osteopathic school: The body has unity; every part depends on every other, chemical and electrical processes entwined, and so called disease results from disturbances of the body s fluids and forces, which set up a sequence of knock-on effects in muscles, glands, digestive organs and every other part, just like the ripples in a pond into which a stone has been thrown. 2. Osteopaths loosen joints and muscles, thereby freeing nerves and vessels to enable the body to excrete poisonous products as fast as they accumulate and allow nature s perfect remedies to destroy the germs before complications created by their toxins could arise.