Mass Manipulation

U.S. osteopathy last week underwent the most drastic spinal manipulation in its history, designed to give it a straight-backed stance, let it hold its head higher among the nation's healing professions. In the process, the long-revered founding father of osteopathy was gently but firmly shouldered out of the picture.

Osteopathy got its start in 1864 when Virginia-born Dr. Andrew Taylor Still lost three of his children in a spinal meningitis epidemic in Kansas. Disgusted with medical methods that could not prevent such disaster. Physician Still proclaimed: "I believe that the Maker of man has deposited in the human body drugs in abundance to cure all infirmities . . . All the remedies necessary to health are compounded within the human body." To get the human drug factory working at peak efficiency, Still prescribed lavish doses of spinal manipulation to preserve "structural integrity." For generations, osteopaths faithfully followed Still in emphasis on manipulation, de-emphasis on drugs.

Last week, at its annual convention in Washington, the American Osteopathic Association (representing the nation's 13,000 doctors of osteopathy) booted Still's bones out of its constitution, went medically more orthodox. Its constitution had formerly included this paean: "The evolution of osteopathic principles shall be an ever-growing tribute to Andrew Taylor Still." The delegates voted (105 to 16) to drop this and to declare simply: "The objects of this association shall be to promote the public health, to encourage scientific research, and to maintain and improve high standards of medical education in osteopathic colleges."

The six such colleges require three years of undergraduate college work, then give a four-year course much like that of conventional medical schools (except for the added emphasis on manipulation) before granting the degree of D.O. Graduates are fully licensed to practice as physicians and surgeons in 36 states; D.O.s are now eligible for appointment as military surgeons by the armed services--though none has yet been given the nod by the M.D.s in the three medical corps.

Discussions with the A.M.A., which might have led to absorption of osteopathy by orthodox medicine, broke down in 1955. But last week the A.O.A. hopefully kept its negotiating committee alive. A.O.A. members were as drug-happy as any M.D.s, crowding exhibits by pharmaceutical houses. They got an accolade of respectability with an address by Aims C. McGuinness, an M.D., a noted pediatrician and special assistant for health and medical affairs to the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare. But there was still a technique session titled "Manipulation of the Infant."

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