Philosophy of Osteopathy

by A. T. Still

If disease is so highly attenuated, so etherial, and penetrable in quality, and multiple in atoms; and a breath of air two quarts or more taken into the lungs fully charged with contagion, how many thousand air cells could be impregnated by one single breath? Say we take a case of measles into a schoolroom of sixty pupils, in a warm and poorly oxygenized atmosphere all day, would not the living gas thrown off from active measles enter and irritate the air cells and close the most irritable cells with the poisonous gas retained for active development in those womb-like departments in the lungs.

Now you have the seeds in thousands of cells, which are as vital and well supplied by nerves and blood as the womb itself. Would not reason see the development of millions more of the vital beings who get their nourishment from the vitality found in the human fascia, which comes nearer to the surface in the lungs than in any part of the system, except it be the womb.

In proof of the certainty of measles being taken up by the lungs at one breath and caught by the secretions and conveyed to the universal system of fascia to develop the contagion, I will give the case of one of my boys who was sick with cold as I supposed; watering of eyes, cough, fever and headache. He was in the country about eight miles from home, and on our return stopped to get his books at a small school house. He ran in, picked up his books that were lying upon the desk, walked the length of the room which was about forty feet, was not there over one-half minute and in just nine days forty-two children broke out with measles. So certain is contagion to be taken up by the nerves and vitalizing fluids of the fascia.

It seems that all the fascia needs to develop anything is to have the seed planted in its arms for construction, the work will be done, labeled, and handed out for inspection by the inspectors of all works.

STUDY OF NERVES AND FASCIA.

We must remember as we reason on the power of life which is located in the fascia, that it occupies the whole body, and should we find a local region that is disordered and wish to, we can relieve that part through that local plexus of nerves which controls that organ and division. Thus your attention should be directed to all nerves of that part. Sensory, to modify sensation, blood must not be let run to the part by wild motion, its flow must be gentle to suit the demands of nutrition, otherwise weakness takes the place of strength, then we lose the benefits of the nerves of nutrition, by which strength of all systems of force are kept in action during life.

Suppose the nerves that supply the lungs with motion should stop, the lungs would stop also; suppose they should half stop, the lungs would surely half stop. Now we must reason, if we succeed in relieving lungs, that all kinds of nerves are found in them. The lungs move, thus you find motor; they have feeling, thus the sensory; they grow by nutrition, (thus the nutrient nerves;) they move by will, or without it; they have a voluntary and involuntary system; they move in sleep by the involuntary system.

The blood supply comes under the motor system of nerves, and delivers at proper places for the convenience of the nerves of nutrition. The sensory nerves limit the supply of arterial blood to the quantity necessary, as the construction is going on by each successive stroke of the heart. They limit the action of the lungs, receive and expel air in quantities sufficient to keep up purity of the blood, etc. With this foundation we observe if too great action of the motor nerves, shows by breathing too often to be normal, we are admonished to reduce breathing by addressing attention to the sensory nerves of lungs, in order that the blood may pass through the veins, whose irritability has refused to receive the blood, farther than arterial terminals. So soon as sensation is reduced relaxation of nerve fibers of veins tolerates the passage of venous blood, which is deposited in the spongy portions of the lungs in such quantities as to overcome the activity of the nerves of renovation that accompanies the fascia in its process of ejection of all fluids that have been detained an abnormal time, first in the region of the fascia, then in the arterial and venous circulation. Thus you see what must be done. The veins as channels must carry away all blood as soon as it has deposited its nutrient supplies to the places for which it is constructed, otherwise, by delay vitality by asphyxia is lost to the blood which calls a greater force of the arterial pumps to drive the blood through the parts, ruptures its capillaries and deposits the blood in the mucous membrane; until nerves of the fascia becomes powerless by surrounding pressure, which causes through the sensory nerves an irritability at the heart, which puts in force all its powers of motion.

TUMEFY, TUMEFACTION.

Webster's definition of tumefaction is to swell by any fluids or solids being detained abnormally at any place in the body.