Forgotten treasures

To get a more complete appreciation of the potential that lies within osteopathic practice, it first helps us to familiarize ourselves with the environment in which A.T. Still lived and worked. As a result of this lively experience, he devoted his life largely to discovering and developing osteopathy. It is remarkable to note that his original intention with osteopathy was to support sick people in regaining their health. A fact that many osteopaths apparently have forgotten today. The first osteopaths were not focused on pain and injury, as we are now, but rather focused on supporting the sick. The seminars of "Forgotten Treasures of Osteopathy" outline a framework to understand the origins of osteopathy. They also offer the practical approaches used by Sutherland to treat sick people; long before he focused strongly on the skull and cranio-sacral system.

The origins of Osteopathy

The first seminar, "The origins of Osteopathy", reveals that osteopathy did not develop in a vacuum. But rather that the environmental conditions prior to - and during Still's time helped him formulate his ideas, which ultimately led to his development of osteopathy. In turn, Still's way of teaching became part of the environment, so that other osteopaths of the first generation were influenced in the contributions they made; osteopaths such as Sutherland and Littlejohn. During the seminar it will be shown that 1900 - the year in which Sutherland and Littlejohn graduated - was the end of a wonderful period of osteopathy. In the decades that followed, a number of factors led to the dilution of Still's osteopathy and a permanent division into osteopathic manual practice on the one hand and osteopathic medicine on the other.

Before the PRM: Sutherland's Early Approaches to Patient Care

The second seminar, "Before the PRM: Sutherland's Early Approaches to Patient Care", reveals how Sutherland, trained by Still and Littlejohn, left behind a well-defined track about his way of treating the sick patient. He did this decades before he introduced the concept of the PRM! On the basis of recently discovered correspondences, we will discuss and apply Sutherland's original insight and techniques with regard to the sick patient. Some of his original approaches have been unrecognizably changed or largely forgotten, and many no longer exist in the current curricula of the osteopathic education. However, on the basis of this course, it is demonstrated that his approaches remain easily accessible and can be converted quite easily. Provided we do this as the "Old doctor" has encouraged us with the words "Dig on".