In early life I began the study of anatomy, believing it to be the “alpha and omega,” the beginning and the end, of all forms and the laws that give forms, by selection and the association of the elements, kinds and quantities, to the human body. The human form indicates an object. In the first place, it is constructed as a hieroglyphical representation of all beings and principles interested physically or mentally in the production of worlds, with their material forms, their living motions, and their mental governments. Man represents the mind and wisdom of God to the degree of his endowments. This is shown by his display of knowledge, and ability to increase that knowledge to the degree of fullness attainable by his allotted mental perception, and by his accumulation and association of facts to the degree of able conclusions. He reasons because of the lack of that amount of mental ability known as knowledge absolute. He can fill all the limits in his sphere, and no more. The fish can swim up to the surface of the water; it can dive to the bottom; it can swim the length and width of rivers and oceans in which it is prepared to dwell and explore—in obedience to that command, “Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther.” The high-sailing birds are only the fish of the atmospheric ocean. They can touch the upper surface of this great ocean; they can descend to the lower surface; their limits of life are between the superior and lower limits above cited. They can live, flourish, and enjoy themselves in the field of usefulness for which they were created. The same of the fish. The same law is equally applicable to the human being. If the fish should change place with the bird, it would surely die and become extinct. The same law would be applicable to the bird. That element that sustains animal life belonging to each is abundantly supplied and dwells in its peculiar environment. The same law of extinction would be equally forcible should the bird try to dwell in the waters of the seas. Let us make the application of this crude base of our philosophy, and make a few changes for the convenience of reason. Suppose we should move the heart up to the cranial cavity and the brain down to the place now occupied by the liver, and the liver to the position of the lungs, and place the lungs on the sacrum; what would you expect but death to both fowl and fish? Thus the practical osteopath must be very exacting in adjusting the system. He must know that he has done his work right in all particulars, in that the forms, great and small, all through the body, must be infinitely correct, with the object in view, that the necessary fuel and nutriment of life that is now in the hands of Deity may be adjusted to the degree of perfection that it was when it received the first breath of individualized life.

Osteopathy is built upon the principle of debtor and creditor. We must willingly credit Nature with having done its work to perfection in all the machinery and functions of animal life, and that the after-results are good or bad according to centers and variations. If we observe any variations from the normal center, our work is never complete nor the reward due us until by adjustment we have reached the normal. We know our responsibility, and should labor to render a just account, and willingly submit our work to the anatomical critic.

Works on physiology at the present date are compilations of many theories and a few facts. In animal physiology we all know that a babe is not as big as a man, but that it may in time grow to man’s size. To get large, man must be builded of material to suit his form. Each piece must be so shaped that in union with all other pieces a complete running engine will be made, not by chance, but by the rule of animal engine-making. When complete, he is a self-acting, individualized, separate personage, endowed with the power to move, and mind to direct in locomotion, with a care for comfort and a thought for his continued existence in the preparation and consumption of food to keep him in size and form to suit the duties he may have to perform.

So far, we are only able to see man in his completed form. We know but little of how he obtained his shape, size, and action. At this point we mentally ask, How is all this work done? We soon learn that the book of Nature is the only true source from which we can get such knowledge, and if we are to know the whys and hows of the wonderful work, we must enter the shops of Nature, observe, and reason from effect to cause. We know that if we ever know the whole, we must first know the parts. We take the dead man to the table and open all parts to view. We begin our book of knowledge under the wise teaching of experience. Here we launch out on the sea of anatomy. We cut away the skin that encases or covers the whole body. As soon as we pass through and remove the skin, we enter the fascia. In it we find cells, glands, blood and other vessels, with nerves running to and from every part. Here we could spend an eternity with our present mental capacity, before we could comprehend even a superficial knowledge of the powers and uses of the fascia in the laboratory of animal life. From the fascia we journey on to the muscles, ligaments, and bones, all in forms and conditions to suit Nature’s great design of the living machine. By the knife we expose organs, glands, and blood-vessels.

Let us treat “Physiology” with due respect and credit old theories with all the light they give and all the good they have done, but do not be afraid of their wisdom. So far, they have only seen with the microscope that which appears in dead flesh and in chemical analyses of the dead compounds. They have tried to learn something. They say, “Possibly,” “However,” “Doubted by So-and-So,” and “As we remarked before in our last lecture, that there was great differences of opinions on the subject of bacteria, microbes, and various other theories on the physiological action or blood-changes in croup, diphtheria, and all diseases of the throat, trachea, tonsils, and glandular system during the rage of such epidemics.” At about this time the student is told that in all diseases of the throat and lungs a wonderfully new remedy, antitoxin, in full and frequent doses, has been very favorably reported upon, and that less than 50 per cent of the cases of diphtheria bad died under the antitoxin method of treating the disease. What I want to say to the student is about this: I think that at the very time a young doctor needs knowledge on the cause of diseases he is pushed into the idea that he must look over the recipe papers till he finds “Good for Croup” on a prescription-sheet. Then a copy is sent in haste to the drug store to be filled. The good but wise druggist does not have quite all the drugs named in the prescription, so he puts in substitutes. If the patient gets well, then the drug clerk compounds more of the mixture and tells the world what a wonderful “cure-all” he has found. The next prescription comes, but for another disease. The prescription is written by the same good old doctor; the same story—not all the drugs on hand, another substitute is tried. That patient dies; all is quiet. The druggist feels skittish, hunts the prescription, and keeps it to show that the doctor sent the same, and tells that it was duly filled. He keeps the world wisely ignorant of substitutes. Thus the young doctor is led off by symptomatology to the idea that he must find something to give and take.

As chemical compounds are not used by the osteopath as remedies, then chemistry as a study for the student is only to teach him that elements in Nature combine and form other substances, and without such changes and union no teeth, bone, hair, or muscle could appear in the body. Chemistry is of great use as a part of a thorough osteopathic education. It gives us the reasons why food is changed in the body into bone, muscle, and so on. Unless we know chemistry reasonably well, we will have considerable mental worry to solve the problem of what becomes of food after eating. By chemistry the truths of physiology are firmly established in the mind of the student of Nature. He finds that in man wonderful chemical changes do all the work, and that in the laboratory of Nature’s chemistry there is much to learn. By chemistry we are led to see the beauties of physiology. Chemistry is one thing and physiology is the witness that it is a law in man as it is in all Nature. By chemistry we learn to comprehend some of the laws of union in Nature which we can use with confidence. In chemistry we become acquainted with the law of cause and change in union, which is a standard law sought by the student of osteopathy.

Osteopathy believes that all parts of the human body act on chemical compounds, and from the general supply manufacture the substances for local wants. Thus the liver

builds for itself the material that is prepared in its own division laboratory. The same of heart and brain. No disturbing or hindering causes will be tolerated if an osteopath can find and remove them. We must reason that on withholding the supply from a limb it would wither away. We suffer from two causes—want of supply and the burdens of dead deposits.

This branch of study, Principles of Osteopathy, gives us an understanding of the perfect plans and specifications followed in man’s construction. To comprehend this engine of life, it is necessary to constantly keep the plans and specifications before the mind, and in the mind, to such a degree that there is no lack of knowledge of the locations and uses of any and all parts. A complete knowledge of all parts, with their forms, sizes, and places of attachment, is gained, and should be so thoroughly grounded in the memory that there can be no doubt of the use or purpose of the great or small parts, and what duty they have to perform in the working of the engine. When the specifications are thoroughly learned from anatomy or the engineer’s guide-book, we will then take up the chapter on the division of forces, by which this engine moves and performs the duties for which it was created. In this chapter the mind will be referred to the brain to obtain a knowledge of that organ, where the force starts, and how it is conducted to any belt, pulley, journal, or division of the whole building. After learning where the force is obtained, and how conveyed from place to place throughout the whole body, one becomes interested and wisely instructed. He sees the various parts of this great system of life when preparing fluids commonly known as blood, passing through a set of tubes both great and small, some so very small as to require the aid of powerful microscopes to see their infinitely minute forms, through which the blood and other fluids are conducted. By this acquaintance with the normal body which has been won by a study of anatomy and in the dissecting-rooms, he is well prepared to be invited into the inspection-room, to make comparison between the normal and the abnormal engines. He is called into this room for the purpose of comparing engines that have been thrown off the track or injured in collisions, bending journals, pipes, or bolts, or which have been otherwise deranged. To repair this machine signifies an adjustment from the abnormal condition in which the machinist finds it to the condition of the normal engine. Our work would commence with first lining up the wheels with straight journals. Then we would naturally be conducted to the boiler, steam chest, shafts, and every part that belongs to a complete engine. When convinced that they are straight and in place as designated in the plans and described in the specifications, we have done all that is required of a master mechanic. Then the engine goes into the hands of the engineer, who waters, fires, and conducts this artificial being on its journey. As osteopathic machinists we go no further than to adjust the abnormal conditions back to the normal. Nature will do the rest.

With anatomy in the normal properly understood, we are enabled to detect conditions that are abnormal. It may be that by measurement we can discover a variation one-hundredth of an inch from the normal, which, though infinitely small, is nevertheless abnormal. If we follow the effects of abnormal straining of ligaments, we will easily come to the Conclusion that derangements of one-hundredth part of an inch are often probable of those parts of the body over which blood-vessels and nerves are distributed, whose duties are to construct, vitalize, and keep a territory, though small in width, fully up to the normal standard of health. The blood-vessels carrying the fluids for the construction and sustenance of the infinitely fine fibres, vessels, glands, fascia, and cellular conducting channels to nerves and lymphatics, must be absolutely normal in location before a normal physiological action can be executed in perfect harmony with the health-sustaining machinery of the body. If a nerve or vessel should be disturbed, we would expect delay and a subsequent derangement in the workings of the laboratory of Nature. Thus we recognize the importance of a thorough acquaintance with the large and small fibres, ligaments, muscles, blood and nerve supply to all the organs, glands and lymphatics of the fascia, and the blood-circuit in general. We wish you to make yourself so thoroughly acquainted with the human anatomy that your hand, eye, and reason will be unfailing guides to all causes and effects. We wish to impress upon your minds that this is a living and trustworthy symptomatology, and not speculative, having its commencement in words and winding up with unreliable rehashings of antiquated theories that have neither a father nor a mother whose counsel and milk have ever led their children beyond the yellow chalk-mark of stale custom, born and sustained to this day by the nightmare of stupidity, ignorance, and superstition. This is the book of symptomatology that I wish you to purchase. Use it in place of all others. Its price is eternal vigilance.

Surgery, as taught in the American School of Osteopathy, is to be used as often or as much as wisdom finds it necessary in order to give relief and save life or limb when all evidence with facts shows that blood cannot repair the injuries. It is then and then only that we use surgery to save life, limb, and organs of the body from worse conditions, by allowing dead fluids to destroy them by poisoning absorptions. Surgeons of the Army or Government are the commissioned officers of health, with powers and instructions to use drugs or anything else for the relief of the wounded or sick soldier while in the service. Their duties extend to the use of both knife and spatula. Surgery has its place in the scientific uses, and I think it has grown to be a very great science. In the hands of a judicious person, it can be of untold benefit; but in the hands of a bigot, I think it is a deadly curse. Osteopathy is surgery from a physiological standpoint. The osteopathic surgeon uses “the knife of blood” to keep out “the knife of steel,’’ and saves life by saving the injured or diseased limbs and organs of the body by reduction, in place of removing them.

We want to avoid the use of the knife and saw as much as possible. We must be pat...