The discovery of Osteopathy
Osteopathy was originated by Andrew Taylor Still in 1865, following the tragic death of his wife and children from one of the many epidemics that swept across the American Midwest in those times. Dr Still was a medical student, but after the best available medicine failed to save his family, he put his efforts into understanding how a healthy body functions.
Dr Still’s Three Principles
Structure governs function
Osteopaths are widely acknowledged as being highly competent in understanding and treating body structures, e.g. joints and muscles. But osteopathy goes far beyond that and can enhance the function of the body as a whole as well as its parts.
The rule of the artery is supreme
Without good circulation and good drainage, health is not possible. A lot of Osteopathic treatment is aimed at improving these functions.
The body manufactures its own medicines
This refers to the body’s innate ability for self-regulation, self-maintenance and self-repair. Amazingly, Dr Still made this pronouncement long before the discovery of endorphins, chemicals produced by the body in response to stress or pain.
Osteopathy etc
A fundamental foundation of Osteopathic philosophy is that each person is unique. Recognising and responding to these variations between people leads to a diagnosis & treatment that is also unique. Two people may present with the same symptom picture, but the underlying causes for the problems may be quite different, so the appropriate treatment will be different. Osteopaths treat people not conditions.
There is a wide variety of techniques used by osteopaths, but all of them involve working on the patient’s body with the hands. The techniques that Ashley uses are gentle, non-invasive but profoundly effective. Generally he finds that Cranial Osteopathy is what will answer the body’s needs best of all.
In the great Spanish flu epidemic of 1919-1921 when 50 million people died worldwide, it is recorded that osteopaths were far more successful than doctors. Only 1% of Osteopathic patients died, whereas over 10% of patients treated by doctors died. (Walter McKone).
Cranial Osteopathy
Dr William Sutherland, a student of A T Still, extended osteopathic principles into the cranium. He recognised that there is an innate movement pattern between the 22 bones that make up the skull, albeit microscopic.
The existence of these movements has been categorically demonstrated by Frymann and also by Upledger. Moreover, this movement pattern extends throughout the whole body and is seen as the central core of the body’s self-regulation, self-maintenance and self-repair capacity, as predicted by Still’s third principle.
Finding and removing obstructions to this mechanism is a gentle yet powerful way of not only fixing problems, but also working on the reasons that the problems arose in the first place, for example old traumas.
Ashley Robinson Osteopath 