Here is a rather amusing quote from A.T. Still in his typical long-winded style- trying to define what osteopathy is.
This is from "Philosophy and Mechanical Principles of Osteopathy" 1902.
http://www.interlinea.org/atstill.html
It explains his attitude towards drugs and surgery perfectly.
OSTEOPATHY.
What is osteopathy? It is a scientific knowledge of anatomy and physiology in the hands of a person of intelligence and skill, who can apply that knowledge to the use of man when sick or wounded by strains, shocks, falls, or mechanical derangement or injury of any kind to the body. An up-to-date osteopath must have a masterful knowledge of anatomy and physiology. He must have brains in osteopathic surgery, osteopathic obstetrics, and osteopathic practice, curing diseases by skillful readjustment of the parts of the body that have been deranged by strains, falls, or any other cause that may have removed even a minute nerve from the normal, although not more than the thousandth of an inch. He sees cause in a slight anatomical deviation for the beginning of disease. Osteopathy means a knowledge of the anatomy of the head, face, neck, thorax, abdomen, pelvis, and limbs, and a knowledge why health prevails in all cases of perfect normality of all parts of the body. Osteopathy means a studious application of the best mental talents at the command of the man or woman that would hold a place in the profession. Osteopathy has no time to throw away in beer-drinking, nor has it time to wear out shoe-leather carrying a cue around the pool or billiard-table. It belongs to men of sober brains, men who never tire of anatomy and physiology or of hunting the cause of disease. An osteopath answers questions by his learning. He proves what he says by what he does. An osteopath knows that to the day of the coming in of osteopathy, the whole medical world was almost a total blank in knowledge of the machinery and functions of the abdomen of the human body. The medical man today, if we judge his knowledge by what he does, is perfectly at sea as soon as he enters the abdomen. He combats bowel disease by methods handed down to him by symptomatology. Beginning with chronic constipations, he reasons not on the causes. His one idea is to fall onto a successful purgative drug, which never should be used excepting with great caution. When the most active purgatives fail, with the aid of injections, to effect a movement; the bowels filling up and packing the abdominal cavity so full and tight that no organ below the diaphragm can act and all motion is lost, even to the blockage of arterial and venous circulation of the blood; with the stomach crowded with food, then on to vomiting of fecal matter and the vitality low all over the body; what is left for the medical doctor but surgical interference? And he proceeds with his instrumental skill with hope and doubt. The osteopath gets his success with such diseases through adjustment of the abdominal viscera, with the view of relieving the bowels of bulks of fecal matter, either hard or soft, that are laboring to pass away from the body through the natural channels, but meet mechanical obstructions that are caused by kinks, folds, twists, and knots of the bowels, the result of heavy strains, lifts, and falls that have forced the bowels to abnormal positions in the abdomen, deranging the mesentery at various points. The osteopath feels that he is not justified in administering purgatives, nor even injections into the bowels, until he has straightened out the viscera so that no resisting obstruction is liable to block the passing fecal matter. He proceeds as a mechanic.
