Osteopathy

Osteopathy is the body of medicine that originally used strictly manipulative techniques for correcting somatic abnormalities thought to cause disease and inhibit recovery. However, over the past century, osteopathy has embraced the full spectrum of medicine (to different degrees across the world), including the use of prescription drugs and surgery, in addition to manipulative techniques. Osteopathy or osteopathic medicine is thus both a philosophy and a set of manipulative techniques.

Osteopathic Principles

These eight principles of osteopathy are taken from ?An Osteopathic Approach to Diagnosis and Treatment? DiGiovanna & Schiowitz, a standard osteopathic text book, and are widely accepted throughout the osteopathic community. They are taken from the curriculum of the Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine.

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(1) The Body is a Unit

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(2) Structure and function are reciprocally inter-related

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(3) The body possesses self-regulatory mechanisms

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(4) The body has the inherent capacity to defend and repair itself

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(5) When the normal adaptability is disrupted, or when environmental changes overcome the body?s capacity for self maintenance, disease may ensue

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(6) The movement of body fluids is essential to the maintenance of health

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(7) The nerves play a crucial part in controlling the fluids of the body

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(8) There are somatic components to disease that are not only manifestations of disease but also are factors that contribute to maintenance of the disease state

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These are principles not empirical laws, neither are they commandments; they are ideas that inform the osteopathic study of the basic medical sciences, they are not an alternative to orthodox medical sciences but the basis of a philosophy that informs the osteopathic approach to health and disease.

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The clinical application of anatomical and physiological knowledge is central to the practice of osteopathy. An interesting discussion of the philosophy of osteopathy is given in Chapter 1; Science in the Art of Osteopathy: Osteopathic Principles & Practice by Caroline Stone.

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