Words and Wisdom, Osteopathic Quotes

Osteopathy has always been an oral tradition – the teachings, the hands on skills and treatments are taught and handed down directly form teacher to student.  This is how osteopathy has been taught since it’s creation and continues today.  The following section is a collection of quotes from multiple sources including osteopathic textbooks, lectures, classes, study groups and journals.  The quotes give a glimpse into a few of the core principles of osteopathy and represent some of the topics often discussed in greater detail between student and mentor.  Many of the quotes can be contemplated for many years, as they reveal a deeper truth over years of study and reflection.   

 

To know Osteopathy one must live it in practice, this is the proving ground it is not a theory but an art based in an oral tradition.                                                                                                             – James S Jealous DO

 

 

 

            The Health

Intorduction

The idea of the Health as a living principle and phenomenon that can be palpated and accessed as a therapeutic force is unique to osteopathy.  This was one of Dr. Still’s most significant contributions to health care and humanity and often one of the most misunderstood principles of osteopathy. The Health in osteopathy is far more than the absence of symptoms or disease; the Health is a living intelligence and therapeutic force responsible for all growth, development and healing from conception, to embryogenesis and through out life.

The Health is our indwelling and natural perfection.  It is a wisdom and intelligence that maintains balance harmony, and homeostasis, it keeps all physiologic functions in balance, it heals a cut finger or injured bone to perfection, restoring the original form.  The Health is always present.

 

To find health should be the object of the doctor. Anyone can find disease. – A.T. Still MD, DO Philosophy of Osteopathy

When all of the fulcrums are synchronized there will be peace and harmony.   -W.G. Sutherland DO

 Any variation from the health has a cause, and the cause has a location.  It is the business of the osteopath to locate and remove it (the cause), doing away with disease and getting health instead.                                                                                                                                                                  – A. T. Still MD, DO, Osteopathy Research and Practice

 The Health does not end at death…the body is the second placenta    – A. T. Still MD, DO, paraphrased

 The Health is our beginning, our origin, our original nature – it contains our name and it’s meaning.                                                                                                                                                                    –  James S. Jealous DO

 How the physician takes a medical history can effect the treatment – take a history that gets them (the patient) connected with their health.        -James S. Jealous DO private conversation

 Health is the Imago Dei, breathed out by the divine    – James S Jealous DO Course Lecture 2012

The Health is at the core of the immune system    – James S. Jealous DO Course Lecture 2011

When every part of the machine is correctly adjusted and in perfect harmony, health will  hold dominion over the human organism by laws as natural and immutable as the laws of gravity.  
— A. T. Still MD, DO, 

 Resting gently with in all lays an infinite wisdom floating upon a sea of boundless love, both formless and with form                                                                                                                                         – Voice of the eternal health

 

        Osteopathy in the Cranial Field

Introduction:  Dr. William Garner Sutherland DO (1873 –  1954)  was a student of Dr. A. T. Still.  Dr. Sutherland spent his entire career studying the primary respiratory mechanism, the cranium, brain and cerebral spinal fluid.  Out of his sixty-five years of dedicated, intense, study and practice emerged a tremendous contribution to osteopathy and humanity which has become known today as osteopathy in the cranial field.  The term osteopathy in the cranial field can be misleading as this scientific branch of osteopathy is not just about the cranium and head, though many of Dr. Sutherlands discoveries arose out of his study of the head.

Osteopathy in the cranial field is a highly specialized study and co-operation with the inherent healing forces and universal laws that are both palpable and observable in nature and the human organism.  It is also the study of subtle rhythmic motions within nature known in osteopathy as primary respiration – primary because it precedes thoracic respiration and is as essential to all of life as oxygen and breathing.  Dr. Sutherland’s work is a major contribution and advancement in osteopathy and applies to all areas of the body not just the cranium.  The term osteopathy in the cranial field is a historic remnant and acknowledgement of Dr. Sutherland’s tremendous contributions and life long dedication to osteopathy.

 

The cerebro-spinal fluid is one of the highest known elements that are contained in the body, and unless the brain furnishes this fluid in abundance, a disabled condition of the body will remain. He who is able to reason will see that this great river of life must be tapped and the withering field irrigated at once, or the harvest of health be forever lost. —A. T. Still M.D. Philosophy and Mechanical Principles of Osteopathy

The arterial stream is supreme but the cerebrospinal fluid is in command  – W. G. Sutherland DO

Every drop knows the Tide. – W. G. Sutherland DO

 Within that cerebrospinal fluid there is an invisible element that I refer to as the “Breath of Life.” I want you to visualize this Breath of Life as a fluid within this fluid, something that does not mix, something that has potency as the thing that makes it move. Is it necessary to know what makes the fluid move? Visualize a potency, an intelligent potency, that is more intelligent than your own human mentality.     –     W. G. Sutherland DO

A successful response from the cerebrospinal fluid… is an intensified interchange between all the fluids of the body… It is definitely evident that the reaction is systemic and includes the whole body even within the bones.                           –Anne Wales DO

 Involuntary motion is the essence of life.   –  James S. Jealous DO

 Turn the waters of life loose at the brain, remove all hindrances and the work will be done, and give us the eternal legacy, longevity.  –A. T. Still MD, DO, Philosophy of Osteopathy

 Dr. Still envisioned the cerebral spinal fluid as an intermediary in the movement of Divine intelligence, a channeling of creation into embryological segments and irrigating them with life, giving form and function and order and intelligence to our existence.                                      – W. G. Sutherland DO

 

Anatomy

Introduction: The study of anatomy has always been a corner stone of osteopathy.  In the early days of osteopathy the student was required to pass a rigorous anatomy exam with a grade of ninety percent or better before he or she could begin the formal study of applied osteopathy.  For Dr. Still anatomy was more than just gross physical structure, for Dr. Still anatomy was a combination of histology, chemistry, physiology, gross structure, and the movement of life all as a single event under one’s hands. 

 

You begin with anatomy, and you end with anatomy, a knowledge of anatomy is all you want or need 
— A.T. Still MD DO Philosophy of Osteopathy

Anatomy is a living wholeness of function and should be seen as a mystery of form, not static academic structure –James S. Jealous DO

Before you can go out in the world and fight the fight, you must master human anatomy and physical laws.                       — A.T. Still MD DO

 An osteopath is only a human engineer, who should understand all the laws governing his engine and thereby master disease.   -A.T. Still MD DO Autobiography

 An osteopath must know the shape and positions of every bone in the body, as well as that part to which every ligament and muscle is attached.  He must know the blood and the nerve supply.  He must comprehend the human system as and anatomist, and also from a physiological standpoint.  He must understand the form of the body and the workings of it.  That is a short way to tell what an osteopath must know.   – A. T. Still MD DO Autobiography

ARTERY

The artery is the river of life, health, and ease, and if muddy or impure disease follows.  A. T. Still MD DO Autobiography

 The rule of the artery must be absolute, universal and unobstructed, or disease will be the result  A.  T. Still MD, DO, Autobiography

 We must know how the blood is supplied and when the arterial blood has done its work.   A. T. Still MD, DO Osteopathy Research and Practice

 

Wholeness

 Introduction: Wholeness is a core principle of osteopathy.  It is a living truth that challenges us to maintain our integrity and our dependence on something much greater than ourselves.  Wholeness requires that we maintain a sense of the entire patient and always look for cause.

 

Wholeness is the smallest division of life     – Unknown

 We look at the body in health as meaning perfection and harmony, not in one part, but in the whole.                                          -A. T. Still MD, DO

 I feel that twenty-five years of constant study on the parts of man, separated and combined, has prepared me fairly well to enter the higher classes as a beginner to study the active laws of life—to inquire into the hows and whys of the workings and failures of the whole being.         – A. T. Still MD, DO, Autobiography

 Physicians – do not split the body in half.  The right hand feels the whole and the left hand feels the whole.  If the right hand feels the right side and the left hand feels the left side then you create a false midline. –  James S. Jealous DO

 Let that from which you were wounded become your cure. – Migne

NORMAL FUNCTION

 An osteopath reasons from his knowledge of anatomy.  He compares the work of the abnormal body with the normal body.  A. T. Still MD, DO, Osteopathy Research and Practice

 Our skill as an osteopath is proportional to our capacity to recognize normal.  James S. Jealous DO, Course lecture 2004

For days and months and years I have examined and analyzed the normal and abnormal position of all bones of the whole system.  By this extensive study I have formed in my head a perpetual image of every articulation in the framework of the human body.  – A. T. Still MD, DO, Osteopathy Research and Practice

We must have a perfect image of the normal articulations of the bone or bones that we wish to adjust.  A. T. Still MD, DO, Osteopathy Research and Practice

 To cure disease the abnormal parts must be admitted to the normal.
    – A. T. Still MD, DO, Osteopathy Research and Practice

 

The Mystery of Osteopathy

 We have something more potent than our own force working always in the patient towards the direction of the normal. –   W. G. Sutherland DO Contributions of Thought

 Osteopathy is a search for communication and cooperation with the natural laws of healing.  –James S. Jealous DO lecture 2003

An osteopath is taught that Nature is to be trusted to the end.  – A.T. Still MD, DO, Autobiography

 To know all of a bone in its entirety would close both ends of an eternity.  – A. T. Still MD, DO Autobiography

 My spirit was overwhelmed with the immeasurable magnitude of the Deific plan on which the universe is constructed. – A. T. Still MD, DO, Autobiography

Life is that calm force sent forth by Deity to vivify all of nature  – A. T. Still MD DO

 Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.  – Albert Einstien

 I love my patients I see God in their faces and their form.  – A. T. Still MD, DO

 God is the Father of Osteopathy, and I am not ashamed to be a child of His mind.  –A.T. Still MD, DO, Autobiography