A Nod to Manipulation

Osteopathy in the U.S. frequently gets the cold shoulder from public health officials and medical doctors. Last week, for a change, osteopaths had something to crow about. For the first time, under the U.S. Public Health Service program of aid to professional schools, teaching grants ($25,000 and $20,000 respectively) had been awarded to two colleges of osteopathy. The A.M.A. made no objection.

"In awarding these grants," said U.S. Surgeon General Leonard Scheele, "we are recognizing the plain fact that many cancer cases are seen for the first time by osteopaths." To the nation's 11,299 licensed osteopaths, however, the decision meant recognition of a far wider sort.

Treatment Plus. In osteopathy's long, slow climb toward respectability, every nod has helped. The nation's six accredited schools of osteopathy require four years of professional training, as medical colleges do, and two years of college-level pre-training for a doctor's degree (D.O.).Their curricula include anatomy, pharmacology, surgery, bacteriology, other standard subjects in the education of a medical doctor. In all but eight states,* their graduates may now prescribe drugs and perform surgery, as well as practice the "manipulation" which is the keynote of their science. The main trouble has been the osteopath's emphasis on manipulation, a technique designed to maintain the normal circulation of blood and proper nerve function, which osteopaths regard as basic to all health. Thus, many M.D.s persist in regarding osteopathy as little better than chiropractic, whose practitioners claim that illness springs from maladjustment of the spinal column. The American Medical Association still holds it unethical for an M.D. to refer his patients to an osteopath (unless the osteopath also happens to be an M.D.).

Over & beyond a natural bristling at such snubs, the osteopath retorts that the M.D. and his drugs do only half the job. The osteopath claims he gives "treatment plus"--removal of the immediate cause of disease by medical methods, and restoration of the body to "mechanical integrity" by manipulation.

Never Forget. During World War II, many a medical man was forced to leave his private patients to fend for themselves. The osteopaths got their business, but still chafed at the fact that the Army did not consider their professional services worth drafting into military service. They get just as touchy over the patronizing assumption of broad-minded M.D.s that osteopathy will one day "be absorbed into the general practice of medicine." "Never," says Assistant Executive Secretary Eldon McKenna of the American Osteopathic Association, "at least, never so long as medical men refuse to accept the osteopathic cause and cure of disease. M.D.s treat symptoms. D.O.s treat structural integrity, and they will never forget the concept they were taught."

* Alabama, Illinois, Kansas, Maryland, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, South Carolina.

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