The founder of Osteopathic medicine, Andrew Taylor Still, was born in Virginia in 1828, the son of a Methodist minister and physician. He decided to follow in his father’s footsteps and became a physician. He became a licensed MD in the state of Missouri. In the early 1860s, he went on to serve as a surgeon in the Union Army during the Civil War.

After the Civil War, and following the death of three of his children from spinal meningitis, Dr Still concluded that the orthodox medical practices of his day were frequently ineffective, and sometimes outright harmful. He devoted the next ten years of his life to studying the human body, and finding belter ways to treat infection and disease. Relieving pain was a natural byproduct of his approach.

His research and experience formed the basis of a new medical approach, which he termed Osteopathic Medicine. Using his philosophy, Dr Still opened the first school of Osteopathic Medicine in Kirksville, MO, in in 1892. There were 22 students in the first class, 5 of them women.

Physicians licensed as Doctors of Osteopathic Medicine (DOs), like their MD counterparts, must pass stringent national board exams in order to practice medicine. Unlike MDs, DOs receive additional training in the use of their hands, to address the body as a whole, and to synchronize with the body’s innate capacity to heal.