Joint Bone Spine. 2003 Feb; 70(1): 80-4.

Andrew Taylor Still and the birth of osteopathy (Baldwin, Kansas, USA, 1855).

Hamonet C.

Medical Rehabilitation Department, Henri-Mondor Teaching Hospital, 51 avenue du MarÃ©chal de Lattre-de-Tassigny, 94010 CrÃ©teil, France.

Osteopathy has gained ground in recent years and has been seeking recognition in France. Physicians often lack the information needed to answer patients who have derived from the media, advertisements, and other patients what they believe is a clear idea of osteopathy and its twin sister chiropractic. My academic activities led me to the heart of the United States, to Kansas, where settlers and Indians once stood face to face and where wagon trains left daily for the Western territories. There, in Baldwin, Andrew Taylor Still "discovered" osteopathy. I conducted an in-depth study of the birth of osteopathy and of the ideological and cultural influences that shaped this doctrine. The circumstances that surrounded the development of osteopathy deserve to be widely known because they explain how contemporary osteopaths work. Indeed, although the terms are different, the ideology that underlies osteopathy seems unchanged. The history of osteopathy emphasizes the importance of logical thinking in medicine, of the principle of pathophysiological foundation, of diagnostic hypotheses, and of careful treatment selection complying with the rules of deontology and ethics. Osteopathy is without doubt a product of society and perhaps also of vogue. It cannot leave physicians indifferent.