| Osteopathy was devised in 1874 by Andrew | | | | relieve pain, improve mobility, and restore |
| Taylor Still. He trained as an engineer | | | | all-round health. Osteopaths believe that we |
| before receiving formal medical training at | | | | function as a complete working system - our |
| Kansas City School of Physicians and | | | | body structure, organs, systems, mind, and |
| Surgeons, after which he worked as an army | | | | emotions are all interrelated and mutually |
| surgeon. He was unhappy with the often brutal | | | | interdependent. Because of this, problems |
| medicine of his day, and he felt that | | | | that affect one part of the structural body |
| stimulating the body's natural powers of | | | | upset the balance of the body generally, and |
| self-healing would be preferable. He was | | | | also the emotions. Similarly, internal |
| interested in the body as a machine and | | | | problems can reveal themselves in the body's |
| became aware that many illnesses were the | | | | structure as it adapts to accommodate pain, |
| result of misalignment of the body's | | | | discomfort, or disease. In Britain over 5 |
| structures. Manipulation could restore the | | | | million people a year visit an osteopath, |
| balance and cure illness, he believed. | | | | many of them now referred by a doctor. In the |
| Osteopathy is a manipulative therapy that | | | | United States, where osteopaths are also |
| works on the body's structure (the skeleton, | | | | medically trained doctors, the figure is in |
| muscles, ligaments, and connective tissue) to | | | | excess of 100 million. |