What is the difference between a Chiropractor and an Osteopath
One of the most common questions we get asked in the clinic is what is the difference between a Chiropractor and an Osteopath. There are many similarities between chiropractic and osteopathy treatments. Both are mainly hands on treatments and both professions are regulated by law.
The Beginnings of the Professions
Osteopathy
Osteopath was founded by, Andrew Taylor Still MD DO (1828-1917), a medical doctor living on the Missouri frontier. The beginnings of Osteopathy actually began when Still was at the age of ten (even though at the time he didn't realise it), young Andrew Still suffered from frequent headaches with nausea. He constructed a rope swing between two trees, eight to ten inches off the ground. He lay down using the rope for a swinging pillow. He wrote, “I lay stretched on my back, with my neck across the rope. Soon I became easy and went to sleep, got up in a little while with headache all gone.” He continued to use this ‘treatment’ successfully every time he had a headache.
Still went on to study medicine and after serving an apprenticeship under his father, he entered the Civil War as a Hospital Steward. After the Civil War and following the death of three of his children from spinal meningitis in 1864, Still concluded that the orthodox medical practices of his day were frequently ineffective and sometimes harmful. He devoted the next thirty years of his life to studying the human body and finding alternative ways to treat disease, believing there must be a better way of healing the sick than introducing toxic substances into the body.
Andrew Taylor Still discovered that he had the ability to put his hands on people and change their physiology. His interest was to enhance nature's own ability to heal. He realised that the human body was potentially perfect in its form and function. He studied anatomy with extreme intensity intending to learn the secrets held by nature's design. He realised the relationship between structure and function. He saw the human body as a highly complex machine which, like any other machine, required proper alignment and lubrication for optimal functioning.
Chiropractic
On Sept. 18, 1895 the first chiropractic adjustment was given by DD Palmer. A prolific reader of all things scientific, DD Palmer realised that although various forms of manipulation had been used for hundreds if not thousands of years, no one had developed a philosophical or scientific rationale to explain their effects.
Harvey Lillard was the janitor of the building in which Palmer worked, and one day he mentioned to Palmer that he had been deaf since an injury to his upper back and neck some years before when he suddenly lifted his head when a loud bang in the street startled him. In doing so he banged his head to the bottom of the sink he was working on at the time and a loud crack occurred somewhere in his neck. He supposedly (as the story goes was deaf in one ear ever since. Palmer supposed that the deafness could have been caused by the spinal trauma, as they were so closely linked, so he examined the man’s back. On finding a bone “out of place” he decided to push the bone back into place in the hope that the deafness could be cured. Sure enough, as history records it, the man’s hearing was restored following the adjustment.
This led Palmer to investigate the effect of the spine on general health. He came to the conclusion that if the spine was not in proper alignment then the nerves around the spine may become impinged or irritated, which could lead to health problems, as he theorised that good communication between the different organs of our body is vital to being healthy. He set about testing his theories apparently with great success. A few years later, he set up Palmer College of Chiropractic, which still exists today.
The philosophy of Osteopathy and Chiropractic are very similar in that the structure and condition of the body influences how the body functions and its ability to heal itself and the mind-body relationship is instrumental in maintaining health and in the healing processes.
