ORIGINS AND PRINCIPLES
Osteopathy began in the late 19th Century in the United States of America. His founder, Dr. Andrew Taylor Still (1828-1917), was unhappy with the aggressive methods and poor results of medicine in his time, and in the search for effective alternatives he realized that normalization of body structure improved its physiology. Once the body was ‘aligned’ (Dr. Still used bones as a reference for diagnosis and treatment, and this is where the name osteopathy comes from), it was surprisingly capable of recovering from all kinds of problem, from a headache to an infection. Still emphasized the importance of free circulation of blood and lymph to maintain health. His hypotheses was that loss of mobility or excessive tension would bother fluid dynamics in the body, a state he would try to manually correct with his treatments.