Then began a long struggle with poverty and abuse. He was obstructed by his profession and ridiculed by his friends. Fifteen years after the discovery of Osteopathy found Dr. Still located in the little town of Kirksville, Mo., where he had gradually attracted a following who had implicit faith in his power to heal by what to them seemed mysterious movements. His fame spread beyond the town, and chronic sufferers began to turn toward Kirksville as a Mecca of healing. Others began to desire Still's healing powers. In 1892 the American School of Osteopathy was founded, which from a small beginning has grown until the present buildings and equipment cost more than $100,000. Hundreds of students are graduated yearly from this school, and large, well-equipped schools have been founded in Des Moines, Philadelphia, Boston and California, with a number of schools of greater or less magnitude scattered in other parts of the country. More than four thousand Osteopaths were in the field in 1907, and this number is being augmented every year by a larger number of physicians than are graduated from Homeopathic colleges, according to Osteopathic reports. About thirty-five States have given Osteopathy more or less favorable legal recognition. The discussion of the subject of Osteopathy is of very grave importance. Important to practitioners of the old schools of medicine for reasons I shall give further on, and of vital importance to the thousands of men and women who have chosen Osteopathy as their life work. It is even of greater importance in another sense to the people who are called upon to decide which system is right, and which school they ought to rely upon when their lives are at stake. I shall try to speak advisedly and conservatively, as I wish to do no one injustice. I should be sorry indeed to speak a word that might hinder the cause of truth and progress. I started out to tell of all that prevents the sway of truth and honesty in therapeutics. I should come far short of telling all if I omitted the inconsistencies of this "new science" of healing that dares to assume the responsibility for human life, and makes bold to charge that time-tried systems, with their tens of thousands of practitioners, are wrong, and that the right remedy, or the best remedy for disease has been unknown through all these years until the coming of Osteopathy. And further dares to make the still more serious charge that since the truth has been brought to light, the majority of medical men are so blinded by prejudice or ignorance that they _will_ not see.