Philosophy of Osteopathy

by A. T. Still

BREEDING CONTAGION.

The mothers of the human race give birth to children from puberty to sterility. She may give birth a dozen times, but nature finally calls a halt, and the whole system of life sustaining nerves of the womb which are in the fascia, with blood in great abundance to supply fœtal life, ceases to go farther with the processes of building beings. Vitality for that purpose stops, never to return. Nature has no longer a demand for her system to act as a constructing cause for other beings, of her kind, and she is free the remainder of her days.

A question arises. Are children all she can develop in her system and give birth to? No, she can go through other processes of breeding. In her fascia there is one seed, if vitalized will develop a being called measles. She never has but one confinement. That set of nerves that gave support and growth to measles died in the delivery of the child, and never can conceive and produce any more measles. Another seed lives in her fascia waiting to be vitalized by the male principle of smallpox, and when it is born it always kills the nerves that gave it life and form. And the person never can have but one such child or being during life.

Still another seed awaits the coming of the commissary to nourish while it consumes that vitality in the fascia of the glands to develop the portly child we call mumps. Both male and female conceive and give birth to such beings, then tear up the tracks and roads behind them, by killing the demand for such drink.

I want to draw the mind of the reader to the fact that no being can be formed without material. A place in which to be developed, and all forces necessary to do the needed work. And as all excressences and abnormal growths, diseases and conditions, must have the friendly assistance of the fascia before development; the fascia is the place to look for cause of disease and the place to consult and begin the action of remedies in all diseases, even though it be the birth of a child.

THE SEEDS OF DISEASE.

We can arrive at truth only by the powerful rules of reason, so the philosopher has shouted from the house tops of all ages. He adjusts his many supposable causes, adds to and subtracts until he arrives at a conclusion based upon the facts of his observations. Knowing the principles that exist in substances and seeds, by which when associated with proper conditions that powerful engine known as animal life gives the truth with fact and motion as its voucher. We reason, if corn be planted in moist and warm earth, that action and growth will present the form of a living stalk of corn, which has existed in embryo, and still continues its vital actions as long as the proper conditions prevail, i. e., until the growth and development is completed. If you take a seed in your fingers, push it in the ground and cover it up, incubation, growth and development is expected in obedience to the law under which it serves. Thus we see to succeed we must deposit and cover up the seed in order that the laws of gestation may have an opportunity by which they get the results desired. As nature always presents itself to our minds as seeds deposited in soil and season to suit, and it is loyal to its own laws only, we are constrained by this method of reasoning to conclude that disease must have a soil in which to plant its seeds before gestation and development. It must have seasonable conditions, the rains of nourishment, also the necessary time required for such processes. All these laws must be fulfilled to the letter, otherwise a failure is absolute. As the great laboratory of nature is always at work in the human body, the chilling winds and poisonous breaths, with extremes of heat and cold at different seasons of the year by day and night, and the lungs and skin are continually secreting and excreting every minute, hour and day of our lives, is it not reasonable to suppose that we inhale many elements that are floating in the common winds that contain the seeds of some destructive element, to the harmony of fluids that are necessary to sustain the healthy animal forms.

GENERATING FEVER.

Suppose it should start the yeast, or kind of substance that lives greatly upon lime. If this yeast in its action and thirst for food to suit its life and appetite should call in from the earth, water and atmosphere for its daily food lime substances only, and by its power destroy all other principles taken as nourishment, is it not reasonable to suppose it would deposit such elements in over powering quantities in the fascia of the mucous membrane of the lungs in such quantities, as to overcome the renovating powers of the lungs and excretory system, by its paralyzing quantities of diseased fluids, all through the universal fascia of animal life. This deposit acts as an irritant to the sensory nerves to such an extent that the electricity of the motor nerves is forced to take charge of, and run the machinery of the human body, with such velocity as to raise the temperature of the body, by putting the electricity above the normal action of animal life, and thereby generate that temperature known as fever?

The two extremes, heat and cold, may be the causes of retention and detention. One is detained by the contraction of cold until the blood and other fluids die by asphyxia. The warm temperature produces relaxation of the nerves, blood, and all other vessels of the fascia, during which time the arteries are injecting too great quantities of fluids to be renovated by the excretory systems. Thus you have a cause for decomposition of the blood and other substances, to be conveyed to the lungs for purification and renewal. You have a logical foundation and a cause for all diseases, catarrhal, climatic, contagions, infections, and epidemics. The fascia proves itself to be the probable matrix of life and death. Beginning with the mucous membrane penetrating all parts to supply and renovate the fluids of life, and nourishing all the nerves of nutrition and assimilation. When harmonious in normal action, health is good; when perverted, disease is destructive unto death.