Philosophy of OsteopathyStill, A. T. (Andrew Taylor)
Philosophy
Philosophy of Osteopathy
Still, A. T. (Andrew Taylor)
Osteopathic medicine
We believe only when we do not know. Belief and doubt are equal terms.
If we believe the sacrum is formed by a local system, then we can or
will have cause to believe that the rectum and colon appear after the
outer skin is in process of forming. For want of the truths we are left
in speculative doubt. I believe the lower bowels are formed by local
machinery that receives and appropriates to the purpose of construction
of such parts or organs as nature designs to be used there. If we
dissect a chicken as soon as hatched we will find the colon beginning at
rectum and complete in form, but not connected to the small intestines.
THE PELVIS.
To get more directly at the point I want to make I will say I have some
reasons to believe that the lower bowels are builded from rectum to the
vermiform appendix, by acts of pelvis. It may be well to state that I
have seen formation of rectum and colon in the chicken, before the small
intestines were visible at all. Then in same chicken I saw, liver, lung,
crop and gizzard, and only one artery in the region of the small
intestines. From this I was led to believe that the pelvis did much of
the forming of the viscera. If so, then we could look for much relief
through the system of the pelvis.
APPEARANCE OF OEDEMA.
OEdema is the one word that appears to be at the first showing of life
and death in animal forms. Previous to death by general swelling of
system, a watery swelling of fascia and lymphatics, even to those of
nerve fibers. If a disease should destroy life by withholding all
fluids, we can trace such cause in the beginning to a time when there
was watery swelling of the centers of nerves of nutrition, to such
amount as to cut off nerve supply until sensation ceased to renovate and
keep off accumulating fluids so long that fermentation did the work of
heating till all fluids had dried up, and the channels of supply closed
by adhesive inflammation, and death follows by the law of general
atrophy.
DO ALL DISEASES HAVE BEGINNING IN OEDEMA?
To assert that all diseases have their beginning in oedema may be wide
in range, but we often find one principle to rule over much territory.
"Instance:" Mind is the supreme ruler of all beings, from the mites of
life to the monsters of the land and sea. Thus we see a ruling principle
is without limit. The same of numbers. By heat all metals melt to
fluidity; acids must have oxygen to begin as solvents in most metals. We
only speak imperfectly of some common laws to prepare the student to
think on the line of probabilities as I hold them out for consideration.
Suppose we begin at the atoms of fluids such as enter to construct
animal or vegetable forms, and pen up till decomposition begins. By
such delay does not nature call a halt and refuse to obey the laws of
construction and let all other supplies pile up even to death? Is not
all this the result of oedema? OEdema surely begins with the first
tardy atom of matter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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