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 ONE thing 
 sure, no 
 one ever 
 suffers from the 
 effects of medica- 
 tion after visiting 
 an Osteopath. 
 
 Charles E. Still 

 
 ^o4ndrew Taylor Still I 
 
 Being a Little Journey to the 
 
 Home of the Founder 
 
 of Osteopathy 
 
 By/ 
 Elbert Hubbard 
 
 Done into a Book by The Roy crofters, at their 
 Shop, which is in East Aurora, New York, mcmxii
 
 Copyright, 1912 
 By Elbert Hubbard
 
 A Little Journey to the Home of 
 ANDREW TAYLOR STILL 
 
 By ELBERT HUBBARD 
 
 T was about the year Eighteen Hundred Fifty- 
 seven that Henry Ward Beecher entered his pulpit 
 one Sunday morning, and announced to his con- 
 gregation that he wanted a thousand dollars to 
 buy Bibles for poor people in Kansas. He said the 
 matter was absolutely imperative, and he would 
 not go on with the services until the money was raised. 
 C[ The Plymouth Church congregation had faith in Henry 
 Ward Beecher, so they simply raised the money as a 
 matter of course. 
 
 And the next day Henry Ward Beecher took the thousand 
 dollars, and bought Sharpe's rifles and shipped them to 
 Old John Brown m Kansas. 
 
 One of these " Bibles " was given to Major Pond, and he, 
 in turn, presented me the document, after he no longer 
 had use for it. I have it now, with his initials cut on the 
 butt, with several notches adjacent. Just what these 
 notches stand for, I do not know. 
 Another of these Bibles was given to a young medicus,
 
 
 [6] ANDREW TAYLOR STILL 
 
 Major Andrew Taylor Still, who was surgeon to the troop 
 of which Old John Brown was in command. The first time I 
 heard of Doctor Still was from the lips of Major Pond. 
 We were out barnstorming the one-night stands, and when 
 topics of conversation ran short, the Major always talked 
 about either Henry Ward Beecher or Old John Brown. 
 <t. Major Pond had followed the footsteps of John Brown 
 from Pennsylvania to Ohio, Ohio to Iowa, Iowa to Kansas. 
 d These fighters for freedom had no commissary, and they 
 took no prisoners. They lived off of the country. They were 
 all pioneers, at home in the open, and even when alone 
 were in good company, for they were on good terms with 
 the stars, with the clouds, with bee-trees, deer, flowing 
 springs, raccoons, opossums, and the entire world of happy, 
 exuberant, lavish Nature. 
 
 Doctor Still was physician to that whole " deestrick." 
 He was twenty-eight years of age when Pond first met 
 him, and Pond was only twenty. So between them lay the 
 gulf of years, for a boy of twenty regards a man of twenty- 
 eight as a veteran. 
 
 Surgeon Still once set a broken wrist for young Jim Pond, 
 and thereby was he fixed in the memory of the man who 
 was to become lecture manager for Henry Ward Beecher. 
 1 The homely, commonsense skill of Major Still in min- 
 istering to the afflicted, the sick or the injured, commanded 
 the great respect of Jim Pond and everybody. 
 Major Still was a man of education. 
 
 Incidentally, he could go out and bring back a deer when 
 no one else knew where the deer were s+ &*
 
 ANDREW TAYLOR STILL [ 7 ] 
 
 other day I saw a picture of the Reverend Abram 
 Still, father of Andrew Taylor Still, reproduced from 
 an old daguerreotype. As I glanced at this picture, I 
 involuntarily said, " John Brown." There was something 
 essentially alike in the countenances of these two men 
 lean, homely, earnest, intellectual, stubborn their high- 
 combed hair bristling with the essence of honesty $+ s+ 
 Call them religious fanatics if you please. In any event, 
 they were men of high-power potencies. 
 And then, at the same time, I saw a picture of Mrs. Martha 
 P. Still, the mother of Andrew Taylor Still a strong, 
 earnest, noble woman, with a square head and a firm jaw, 
 fit mate for a man who was to fight not only with the 
 elements, with poverty, with stupidity, but who was also 
 to make a great fight for human rights. 
 
 T is a splendid thing to be well born. 1 The parents of 
 Andrew Taylor Still were people with personality, plus. 
 They had health, physical strength, mentality. 
 Andrew Taylor Still was born in the year Eighteen Hun- 
 dred Twenty-eight, near Jonesboro, Lee County, Virginia. 
 1 Look this up on the map and you will find it is in the 
 Blue Ridge Mountains, a part of the country which even 
 yet is off the beaten track of civilization. 
 These Virginia mountaineers were descendants of royalty, 
 and some of this royalty was sent out of England for 
 England's good. It was a matter of the survival of the 
 fittest, and in the mountains they formed a law unto 
 themselves.
 
 [8] ANDREW TAYLOR STILL 
 
 Abraham Lincoln was of the same breed long of limb, 
 lean, sinewy, bony, possessed of tremendous physical 
 strength, moving slowly but surely toward the goal. 
 This is the essential type of the Virginia mountaineer ^ ; 
 Abram Still was a Methodist preacher, a circuit-rider, 
 whose fortune it was to live all of his life on the border- 
 land of civilization. 
 
 Whether Andrew Taylor Still had ever gone to school or 
 not, he would have been an educated man, in the sense 
 that he was a well-balanced man. He knew the laws of 
 health intuitively, and had the ability to take care of him- 
 self. Self-preservation is the first law of the mountaineer. 
 d. But his parents were sticklers for " schooling." They 
 believed in discipline, and certainly they did not spare 
 the rod. One of the penalties for poor spelling was to be 
 obliged to sit on a horse's skull, and nobody knows how 
 many sharp points there are on a horse's skull until he has 
 sat on one. And just remember that the days of under- 
 clothes have come since the boyhood of Doctor Still. 
 Perhaps this was the beginning of the Science of Oste- 
 opathy, or the Science of Right Adjustment of bones to 
 tissue s+ $+ 
 
 IN the year Eighteen Hundred Thirty-seven, Abram 
 Still was appointed by the Methodist Conference as 
 missionary to Missouri. Missionaries then were physicians 
 to both soul and body. 
 
 Population moves on parallel lines East or West. Vir- 
 ginians moved into Tennessee and Kentucky, and then
 
 ANDREW TAYLOR STILL [9j 
 
 pushed on through Southern Indiana and Illinois to 
 Missouri . * 
 
 Abram Still was the first Methodist preacher in North- 
 western Missouri. The country was unsurveyed and 
 unmapped, and, for the most part, there were no roads 
 only trails following the path of deer and buffalo, over 
 which the Indian tramped in moccasined feet. 
 The preacher built a log cabin in the woods, with the 
 help of his family. And this log cabin was a school, a church, 
 a doctor's office and a home, until other buildings could 
 be built * &+ 
 
 Down at La Plata was a school conducted by the Reverend 
 Samuel Davidson, of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. 
 The Methodists did not think much of the Presbyterians, 
 but Mrs. Still was intent on giving her children educational 
 advantages. So Andrew was bundled off through the 
 woods, all of his worldly goods tied up in a red handker- 
 chief, headed for the center of light and learning. 
 Much to the surprise of young Andrew, he found the 
 Presbyterian preacher a very gentle, kind and considerate 
 man. The preacher and his wife took the boy into their 
 household and treated him as if he were their own son. 
 And he, in turn, helped them. He split rails, milked cows, 
 made garden, took care of the babies, cooked, washed 
 and scrubbed. He was what you call a " handy boy." 
 Of course, he hunted and fished. Everybody did then. 
 And so the boy grew in body and in brain. He watched 
 the miracle of the seasons, the sugar-bush, the freshet 
 that carried away the bridge, the first Spring flowers that
 
 [10] ANDREW TAYLOR STILL 
 
 came peeping from beneath the snow on the South side 
 of rotting logs; he saw the trees bursting into leaf, the 
 white hills flecked with blossoms of cherry and haw- 
 thorn. There were coon hunts by moonlight, tracks of 
 deer by the salt-lick, bears in the green corn, harvest- 
 time, hog-killing days, frost upon the pumpkin and fodder 
 in the shock, wild turkeys in the clearing, revival-meetings, 
 spelling-bees, debates, hard cider, occasional fights at 
 the store, barn-raisings, quilting-bees, steers to break, 
 colts to ride, apple butter, soft soap, pickled pigs' feet, 
 smoked hams, side-meat, shelled hickory-nuts and walnuts, 
 coonskins on the barn-door, Winter and the first fall of 
 snow, with the tracks of wild things to be chased and 
 followed, boots to grease, harnesses to mend, back-logs, 
 and all of the various manifestations of pioneer life, where 
 the days were packed full and the nights were sacred to 
 sleep ; when tired Nature rested without wakening and 
 the morning came all too soon. 
 
 ANDREW'S desire was to be a circuit-rider, like his 
 J\ father, but his experience with the good Presbyterian 
 preacher was a great enlightener, as he discovered that 
 Presbyterians were pretty nearly as good as Methodists. 
 And later he discovered that all denominations were very 
 much alike ; it is largely a matter of temperament. Much of 
 the business of the circuit-rider was ministering to the phys- 
 ical needs of the people as well as the spiritual and the mental. 
 In fact, it was not so very long ago that the three learned 
 professions were all incorporated in one individual $+ s+
 
 ANDREW TAYLOR STILL [11] 
 
 So Andrew Taylor Still, along about his nineteenth or 
 twentieth year, decided to become a physician. And so 
 he attended the Medical College at Kansas City, and in 
 due time began to practise with his father and an elder 
 brother who was also a physician. 
 
 He became a general practitioner, and every sort of ail- 
 ment that flesh was heir to he ministered to. 
 The Reverend Abram Still had gotten into difficulties 
 with his neighbors, on account of his conscientious stand 
 on the subject of slavery. Those early mountaineers of 
 Virginia did not own black men. In fact, they were the 
 first Abolitionists $+ $+ 
 
 Thomas Jefferson owned slaves, but he devised in his will 
 that all of his slaves should be made free on his death. 
 And any one reading the life of Thomas Jefferson will 
 find statements expressing his dissatisfaction with the 
 " institution." Thomas Jefferson had a goodly trace of the 
 mountaineer in his own composition. But he got mixed 
 up with the planters and fell heir to a big estate on which 
 were located a good many of the dusky chattels. 
 But Abram Still was not so unfortunate. Andrew Taylor 
 Still was an Abolitionist by prenatal tendency. He drank 
 it in with his mother's milk. 
 
 Missouri was the great battle-ground of the abolition idea 
 in the Fifties, and the whole family of Still found it very 
 convenient to move out of Missouri into Kansas, in order 
 to save their epidermis free from puncture &+ &+ 
 Young Doctor Still practised almost all over the Territory 
 of Kansas, and, naturally, he got into the border war,
 
 [12] _ ANDREW TAYLOR STILL 
 
 which evolved into a civil war, about the year Eighteen 
 
 Hundred Fifty-five. 
 
 The slavery and pro-slavery bands were arrayed against 
 
 each other. Whether Kansas should be " slave " or " free " 
 
 that was the question s a+ 
 
 Doctor Still stood for freedom, not only for himself, but 
 
 for other people, white and black. 
 
 And when Old John Brown reached Kansas, along about 
 
 the year Eighteen Hundred Fifty-seven, that he should 
 
 run across Doctor Still was quite the most natural thing 
 
 in the world. 
 
 the first Kansas Legislature was convened, in 
 Eighteen Hundred Fifty-seven, Doctor Still was 
 one of the members. 
 
 The question of slavery, like everything else, seems to be 
 a point of view. Those who owned slaves looked upon the 
 Abolitionists as " nigger thieves." 
 
 Their argument was that if the Abolitionists did not want 
 to hold slaves, they need n't, but that they should not 
 interfere with those who did &+ $+ 
 
 It was a wonderful experience of Doctor Still, as fighter, 
 practitioner, army surgeon. He helped begin the Civil 
 War five years before Sumter was fired upon. He min- 
 istered to friend and foe alike. If there was any fighting to 
 be done, he fought. He fought for the thing he believed 
 was right and true and just ; and where there were bones 
 to set, starving people to feed, and sick people to minister 
 to, whether they wore the gray or the blue made no dif-
 
 ANDREW TAYLOR STILL [ 13 ] 
 
 ference, he was there. Always and forever, Surgeon Still 
 was on the side of humanity. He was a human being. 
 He was right on the firing-line and he has been there 
 ever since &+ s+ 
 
 [UT the one thing that this man was to do to impress 
 humanity was to come later. The Science of Osteop- 
 athy then existed in his mind only as a germ. He was a 
 doubter by nature, and curiously enough, according to the 
 Law of Paradox, a doubter is a man with faith plus. In 
 order to progress, you have to have faith that there is 
 something better ahead, and naturally you doubt the 
 perfection of the present order. 
 
 Doctor Still, happily married, had settled down to farm- 
 ing and practising medicine. 
 
 Only a man living much by himself, on the borderland of 
 civilization and with the beautiful indifference to all that 
 had been done and said before, could have broken up the 
 ankylosis of orthodox medicine. 
 
 Doctor Still was a Naturalist. Every plant and herb and 
 root and flower and leaf that had medicinal qualities was 
 known to him. He pinned his faith to the simple things. 
 C^ And we must remember that this was a time when all 
 physicians practised palliation. If they could relieve a 
 man from pain, they congratulated themselves that he 
 was cured. 
 
 Doctor Still had imagination enough to see that behind 
 the symptom was the cause. And he was always searching, 
 out the reason why .-..
 
 [14] ANDREW TAYLOR STILL 
 
 I believe he is the first man in history to frankly say that, 
 strictly speaking, there is no such thing as disease. 
 These individual, specific things that we call disease, six 
 hundred of which, or more, are recorded in the books, are 
 only symptoms of certain conditions $+ 
 Let a man violate the laws of Nature, be under-nourished, 
 overfed, disturbed mentally, or let pressure of bone play 
 upon the arteries, thus disturbing the circulation, or bone 
 press upon nerve, and this individual may have one or a 
 dozen of these so-called diseases. 
 
 Fever, chills, pneumonia, cold in the head, granulated 
 eyelids, lumbago, Blight's disease, rheumatism, colic, 
 croup, measles these things all trace back to some specific, 
 individual cause. And what this cause was, Doctor Still 
 made it his business to ascertain. 
 
 From Eighteen Hundred Sixty to Eighteen Hundred 
 Seventy-four he thought, studied, observed, compared, and 
 finally there was worked out in his mind a clear and specific 
 science, which is now known as the Science of Osteopathy. 
 C. On June Twenty-second, Eighteen Hundred Seventy- 
 four, having written out his thesis, he gave it to the world. 
 C[ It was a great white milestone on the pathway of 
 progress s* s 
 
 'HE science of medicine dates back to Hippocrates, 
 who lived in Athens during that wonderful period 
 known as " The Age of Pericles." 
 
 Before Hippocrates, medicine and priestcraft were one. 
 Incantations were a big factor in the healing art. The belief
 
 ANDREW TAYLOR STILL [15] 
 
 was general that sickness came from a devil taking pos- 
 session of the human body. So hideous sounds and dis- 
 gusting smells played their parts in driving out the intruder 
 who had jumped the cosmic claim c^ 
 Hippocrates seems to have discovered that certain poisons 
 had a direct chemical effect. He had four powerful drugs 
 that brought about an effect that he could definitely fore- 
 tell. These were a purgative, a diuretic, a diaphoretic and 
 an emetic. In the giving of these drugs, cause and effects 
 could be followed. It was sequence and consequence ; and 
 thus far was it scientific. 
 
 The giving of poisons was founded on the old fallacy that 
 the person was possessed of an evil spirit ; and the whole 
 intent of the nauseous or poisonous drugs was to smoke 
 the intruder out to make it so unpleasant for him that he 
 could not stay on the premises. 
 
 All down the centuries, for twenty-five hundred years, 
 we have seen the outcrop of this superstition. Occasionally, 
 here and there, no doubt, there were physicians of common- 
 sense. But the voices of such come to us only in pianissimo. 
 [ It was a very presumptuous thing for a doctor, edu- 
 cated in an allopath school, to renounce his Alma Mater, 
 break fellowship with his brothers of the profession, and 
 declare that the entire science of medicine, so called, was 
 founded on a superstition. 
 
 iff HIS is practically what Doctor Still did in the year 
 Vti' Eighteen Hundred Seventy-four. It was no hasty 
 generalization. His conclusion was long in ripening, and
 
 [16] ANDREW TAYLOR STILL 
 
 he hesitated for a good many years about putting forth 
 the edict. 
 
 Only a man born and bred in pioneer times, amid pioneer 
 surroundings, would have had the courage and the hardi- 
 hood to have thus burned his bridges without thought of a 
 ferry or subway. If needs be, he would stand right out 
 alone in the open and fight it out. And this is exactly what 
 he did. And behold, everything in the way of vocabulary was 
 heaved in his direction. He was renounced and denounced 
 as a fanatic, an ignoramus, a renegade, a rebel. 
 Doctor Still, however, kept right straight on the even 
 tenor of his way &+ Instead of giving his patients pre- 
 scriptions, written in bad Latin, and mystifying them with 
 terms and language they did not understand, he talked to 
 them plainly in words the import of which they under- 
 stood. He took the patient into his confidence, kindly, 
 gently, surely. He allowed them to state their case and 
 explain their symptoms, as Doctor Still understood per- 
 fectly well that this was a part of the healing process. 
 <!, Doctor Still realized that we are dual in our nature. 
 Man is made up of matter and spirit. 
 
 When the spirit leaves the body, it is dead ; but as long as 
 the spirit inhabits his house of clay, it is more or less 
 master. Mind is king. 
 
 And so Doctor Still did not deny the influence of spirit 
 over matter a thing which the old medicine men had 
 practically done. He was no metaphysician and a meta- 
 physician is a man who hides his opinions even from him- 
 self :* &+
 
 ANDREW TAYLOR STILL [17] 
 
 The old schools of medicine had been so diligent in deceiv- 
 ing people that in the course of time they deceived 
 themselves, thus proving the dictum that the punishment 
 of a liar is that eventually he believes his own lies. 
 The schools of medicine have been built on textbooks 
 written largely in medieval times. Lectures were given 
 explaining these textbooks, and the students were marked 
 for proficiency on their ability to memorize what they 
 were told in lectures and read in books. Any departure 
 from what had been taught in the book or the lecture was 
 penalized &+ &+ 
 
 Thus was there a direct apostolic succession of ignorance, 
 deepening as it went down the ages. The business of every 
 doctor seemed to be largely to protect and fight for the 
 things that he had been taught. He did not understand 
 them or comprehend their import, but he based his knowl- 
 edge on what the book said. If you doubted the truth or 
 the accuracy of his statements, he proudly referred you 
 to the particular page and paragraph in the book. That was 
 sufficient &+ s+ 
 
 But it was n't sufficient for Doctor Still. He took exception 
 to the books. The first item in his plan of diagnosis was to 
 get the patient into a relaxed, hopeful frame of mind, 
 where faith would play its perfect part. 
 Thus he allowed the patient to explain, and although he 
 might know, beforehand, all that the patient had to tell, 
 he realized that he was a sort of Father Confessor to the 
 stricken s^ &+ 
 Then having gotten the man into a relaxed condition of
 
 [ 18 ] ANDREW TAYLOR STILL 
 
 body, gotten rid of tensity, fear, apprehension, he began 
 his manipulations. He found the sore spot, and then he 
 discovered for himself why this spot was sore, and usually 
 he found that there was a pressure of bone on artery, 
 which disturbed the circulation. His business then was to 
 adjust the bones in a scientific way so as to relieve this 
 pressure and equalize the circulation s+ . o 
 One thing sure, he discovered that pressure on nerves or 
 arteries would produce a disease. Gradually he discovered, 
 after treating a great many thousand cases, that these 
 so-called diseases dropped into certain general types. So 
 gradually the manipulation of the bony structure of the 
 body grew into a science, and the relief of the stricken fol- 
 lowed. But Doctor Still bore in mind that commonsense was 
 the first item not only in the healing art, but in living a life. 
 C. To be well, a man must be on good terms with his wife and 
 his children and his neighbors. He must think well of 
 himself and think well of Nature. He must love horses, 
 cows, poultry and pets ; and the more he was interested in 
 the great seething, breathing world of out-of-doors, the 
 better his chances were of keeping well. 
 But beyond this, a man's body is a mechanical contrivance, 
 and if the articulations are displaced or abnormal, there 
 would certainly follow a wrong adjustment, and this mal- 
 adjustment would cause disease. 
 
 STEOPATHY is simply the practise of common- 
 sense. The obvious is the last thing that men learn, 
 and especially learned men, for learned men are mostly
 
 ANDREW TAYLOR STILL [ 19 ] 
 
 learned only in the science of books, not in the world of 
 Nature &+ &+ 
 
 A good Osteopath must not only know the science of 
 adjustment of the bony structure of the human body, but 
 the more he knows of life in general the better fitted he 
 is to practise the healing art. "They little know of England 
 who only England know." 
 
 The man who knows only one thing does not know that. 
 [ Had Andrew Taylor Still been merely a physician, 
 versed and deeply learned in all that the books taught, he 
 never would have evolved the Science of Osteopathy. It 
 was hardship, deprivation, obstacles, difficulty, that 
 forced him back on his own inventive genius. 
 Doctor David Starr Jordan has said that the value of 
 college is in inverse ratio to the extent of its equipment. 
 This merely means that where you do too much for a 
 youngster he will never do much for himself. Creation, 
 invention, the necessity of making your own tools and 
 living your own life, are great factors in education. 
 I have known Doctor Still for a great many years. I have 
 heard him lecture. I have seen him in the clinic. I have 
 burned brush with him in the clearing, and discussed many 
 themes, walking over the fields and through the woods and 
 down by the creek &+ $ 
 
 Doctor Still is always more interested in life than he is in 
 medicine. He is more interested in health than in disease. 
 He does not look for the abnormal. He has the ability to 
 keep in his mind the ideal of perfect health, and toward 
 this end he is always working. When he writes or speaks,
 
 [ 20 ] ANDREW TAYLOR STILL 
 
 he is talking about health, and his plan always seems to 
 be to open up the sluiceway, to dynamite the rocks in the 
 channel, to clear a pathway through the woods. He is 
 moving toward a certain definite point, and that point is 
 health and happiness. 
 
 The pathological is more or less abhorrent to him, and in 
 conversation he is always talking about the wonderful 
 things in Nature about livestock, steam-engines, machin- 
 ery, and education through co-operation of head, hand and 
 heart. Health is his hobby. Medicine is only incidental &+ 
 Here we get a great, big, broad and generous view of the 
 world. I do not think that he ever realized the amount of 
 opposition that the launching of Osteopathy would bring 
 about. He was simply indifferent to it. He was a fighter by 
 nature and the thing he fought for was human liberty, the 
 right of the individual to live his own life, according to the 
 dictates of his own conscience. 
 
 So it was that he broke loose from the world of medicine 
 and launched a science of his own. 
 
 At the same time, Doctor Still has never been dogmatic 
 in his attitude of promulgating Osteopathy. He realizes 
 that it is a science that is in progress, that the whole thing 
 is more or less fluid. He does not want to ossify it or crystal- 
 lize it. He simply tells what he thinks is true, and relates 
 what he has found in his long and varied experience. 
 Originally, he had no intent of founding a school. He was 
 living a life, and his defiance of the old-school methods was 
 simply an announcement that thereafter he was going to 
 treat patients according to his highest light &+ s+
 
 ANDREW TAYLOR STILL [21] 
 
 ND the patients came to him in wagons, on stretchers, 
 hobbling on crutches and canes ; and thousands of them 
 left their crutches and canes and braces piled up in his 
 front yard. If people could pay all right; if people 
 could n't pay all right ! Doctor Still was n't much of a 
 businessman so far as money was concerned. 
 It was about the year Eighteen Hundred Ninety that 
 Doctor Still conceived the idea of founding a school of 
 medicine, and this was done simply in self-defense. 
 At this time Doctor Still lived in Kirksville, Missouri. He 
 was a farmer and a physician. People were coming for 
 hundreds of miles to be treated. It was more than a local 
 craze. Those who were cured went away and proclaimed 
 the glad tidings. People came in such crowds that they 
 sort of took possession of the town. 
 
 Doctor Still had taught quite a number of young men how 
 to perform the manipulations, and essentially they had 
 gotten his idea and methods fixed in their minds. They 
 became experts, so to speak, in the science of right adjust- 
 ment 3* $& 
 
 Some of the young men and women who had been cured 
 were anxious to learn the art and go out and practise it. 
 And so a little one-room cottage was secured, where lessons 
 were given to these disciples daily. 
 
 Doctor Charles E. Still, son of the " Old Doctor," had 
 taken a turn in various colleges and hospitals in New York, 
 Chicago, Philadelphia and Boston. Now he buckled right 
 down to business with his father and worked sixteen hours 
 a day &* $+
 
 [22] ANDREW TAYLOR STILL 
 
 So the business grew. Soon the little cottage was too small, 
 and a lecture-hall was erected. Other buildings were built 
 in due course $+ 
 
 In Nineteen Hundred, Doctor George M. Laughlin, who 
 had married one of the daughters of Old Doctor Still, was 
 given an interest in the School. And it was a lucky day for 
 Osteopathy, for Laughlin is a man of rare ability. 
 
 ECENTLY I made a little journey to Kirksville and 
 spent a very happy two days mixing with students, 
 professors and patients. 
 
 The Kirksville School of Osteopathy now occupies a dozen 
 buildings or more. There are two magnificent brick struc- 
 tures, with offices, auditorium and lecture-halls, and some- 
 thing like fifty rooms where treatments are given. 
 There is never a loss for patients. Daily clinics are held, 
 and the professor making the diagnosis and giving treat- 
 ment lectures to the class. Every kind and condition of 
 stricken humanity that can be imagined is to be found here 
 young and old, rich and poor, learned and illiterate, 
 they come for treatment. 
 
 No place in the world offers such opportunities for the 
 study of the healing art as Kirksville s+ .- 
 Various other colleges and schools, founded on so-called 
 similar lines, have been started in various parts of the 
 country since the School was founded, twenty years ago. 
 But Kirksville is the home of Osteopathy. It is the home of 
 Doctor Andrew Taylor Still, of Doctor Charles E. Still, 
 of Doctor George M. Laughlin and of Doctor George Still,
 
 ANDREW TAYLOR STILL [ 23 J 
 
 a highly skilled surgeon, a nephew of the Old Doctor s^ 
 These four men, ably assisted by E. C. Brott as business 
 manager, have built up this institution. 
 Emerson says that every great institution is the lengthened 
 shadow of a man. This is certainly true of the College of 
 Osteopathy in Kirksville. 
 
 There are more than seven hundred students in attendance. 
 About one-third of these are women. And I was interested 
 and pleased to note that women, for the most part, are 
 the best students of Osteopathy, and, as a rule, make a 
 decided success of the profession. 
 
 Women make good physicians. The great welling mother- 
 heart is able to extend its ministrations and look after the 
 needs of a great number of people s+ 
 Osteopathy does not pretend to know all about it. No 
 school of medicine is so wholly right it can afford to say 
 that all others are wholly wrong. 
 
 There is good in everything, otherwise the thing could not 
 have existed at all. Recognizing this, Osteopathy seeks to 
 make use of every idea, every appliance, every invention, 
 that can be of service to stricken humanity. 
 At Kirksville is a complete chemical laboratory. There is 
 probably as fine a hospital equipment as can be found any- 
 where in America, with skilled men to operate when the 
 needs demand &<* 
 
 Of course, the main thing in Osteopathy is the " right 
 adjustment," and this, in the vast number of instances, 
 brings relief. This is the secret of Osteopathy, if there is 
 any secret in it, which of course there is n't, because it
 
 [24] ANDREW TAYLOR STILL 
 
 belongs to everybody and anybody who can comprehend, 
 absorb and utilize it &+ 
 
 I noticed that these students at Kirksville had not been 
 " sent to college " ; they had gone of their own accord and 
 free will. Many of them, doubtless, have made sacrifices 
 in order to avail themselves of these educational facilities, 
 and so they improve the time. The loafer does not get in, 
 at Kirksville. 
 
 I had the pleasure of speaking to the entire school body, 
 and I noticed the wonderful receptive spirit that the stu- 
 dents possessed. They were a very healthy, happy, strong, 
 earnest, good-natured lot of men and women. 
 In no college where I have ever spoken and I have spoken 
 in schools, colleges and universities all over the United 
 States, in England, Scotland, Ireland and France have I 
 ever seen a more earnest, receptive, commonsense lot of 
 students . o . r o 
 
 They are drilled, not only in the science of healing, but 
 are likewise taught the necessity of keeping well themselves, 
 d As a body, doctors are not very good insurance risks. 
 They are apt to overstimulate, overeat and underbreathe, 
 and if not driven out by the necessities of their work into 
 the open, they will sit around a red-hot stove and read 
 musty books and medical magazines devoted to the mys- 
 terious, the abnormal and the unusual. 
 The Osteopath is a very good-natured man. Also, he is a 
 hard-working man. 
 
 Osteopathy is not only a profession; it is also a business. 
 If you benefit people and bestow upon them a service, they
 
 ANDREW TAYLOR STILL [ 25 ] 
 
 should pay you for it. Charity has no place in the modern 
 economic world. A service that is not paid for is not appre- 
 ciated r.o .<** 
 
 One thing sure : Osteopathy does not poison, corrupt and 
 kill. And I believe that in ninety-nine cases out of a hun- 
 dred it results in a positive benefit. 
 
 Opening up the articulations, relieving undue pressure, 
 bringing about a complete relaxation all mean bettered 
 circulation and consequent natural elimination of the 
 toxins that the body has accumulated and should throw 
 off. The upright position was not the original intent of 
 Nature. When man began to walk on his two hind feet he 
 put one over on the Dame, and she has been punishing 
 him ever since by occasionally giving him a crooked back- 
 bone * 
 
 We are only well and happy and able to think, to work, 
 to love, to endure, to succeed, when the spinal column is 
 able to do its perfect work. 
 
 I notice that Osteopaths do not talk about " curing " 
 people. All that the good physician can do is allow Nature 
 to play through the human organism. It is Nature heals. 
 C What we all want is to be a good conductor of the 
 divine current, to cultivate the receptive mind, the hos- 
 pitable heart, and have bodies that are fit dwelling-places 
 for the Holy Spirit. 
 
 We are bathed in an Ocean of Intelligence. The world is 
 Spirit. Spirit takes material forms, and one of these material 
 forms is the human body. The human soul seems to be a 
 part of the Great Spirit, partially segregated, as it were, in
 
 [26] ANDREW TAYLOR STILL 
 
 the individual body. Our business is to allow this divine 
 
 spirit to play through us. So the happy, relaxed, generous 
 
 mood is always the healthful mood. 
 
 Take off the pressure of hate, the stricture of jealousy, the 
 
 weight of woe, and a great good follows without fail. 
 
 Pressure of bone on nerve, of articulation on artery 
 
 these hinder the free flow of the secretions. 
 
 The " manips " simply put the machine in good working 
 
 order, so that Nature has her way and can do her perfect 
 
 work . <* 
 
 We are part of Nature in fact, we are Nature. Nature is 
 
 our Mother ; and the more we love Nature, the more we 
 
 understand Nature, the more we move with Nature, the 
 
 happier and better we are. 
 
 The penalties of life are for disobedience of the laws of 
 
 Nature. The blessings of life come from being one with the 
 
 Universal Mother. 
 
 No man can hope to explain the Science of Osteopathy in 
 
 a single little book like this. What I am endeavoring to do 
 
 is to give a general impression of the work of Andrew 
 
 Taylor Still and his very able helpers who are carrying on 
 
 and extending his ideas. 
 
 That these strong, able and commonsense men and women 
 
 have carried the science of Osteopathy beyond what the 
 
 Old Doctor ever anticipated, is no doubt very true. This 
 
 the dear Old Doctor, himself, to me acknowledged a+ s>+ 
 
 Doctor Charles E. Still, the practical head of the School, 
 
 is a very sturdy, efficient and honest type of man. There 
 
 was a livestock show on in Kirksville the day I was there
 
 ANDREW TAYLOR STILL [27] 
 
 last. " Doctor Charlie " and I attended the show, and 
 discussed horses, mules, hogs and sheep with the farmers. 
 I noticed that Doctor Charlie had the respect of every one. 
 His neighbors believe in him his family believe in him 
 and he believes in himself. He is a man who has nothing to 
 hide. He is approachable, friendly, kindly, generous. He is 
 at home anywhere, with all sorts and conditions of men. 
 He is a man to respect and admire &+ s+ 
 
 E sat on the veranda, in the beautiful October sun, 
 and looked off on the dying foliage that deepened 
 into the reds, the browns and the russets, stretching away 
 miles on miles on every side. 
 
 " The year is dying," said the Old Doctor. " Perhaps we 
 are all dying. 
 
 " I am well past eighty, and the great work down there 
 goes on without me. It seems to go even better without me 
 than with me. And yet I take a hearty interest in it. 
 " All of those boys and girls that come here to study are 
 my children. Only a few of them I know now by name. 
 Once I knew every student here, and a good deal of his 
 history. I called him by name as we passed. This is not 
 so now. The business is growing beyond me, and I feel that 
 I could pass away and the work would still go on. 
 " This does not sadden me. I have killed the Black Wolf 
 of Death. The other name of this wolf is Fear, and Fear is 
 in all the pens of the lambs of God. In all religious denomi- 
 nations you will find the element of fear and the horror at 
 thought of death t>+ *
 
 [28] ANDREW TAYLOR STILL 
 
 " I have seen many people die. I have stood by the bed- 
 side and told the man that he would tomorrow at this 
 time be a corpse, and I have never yet known an individual 
 who was stripped for eternity who knew anything of life 
 after this. It is all belief, hearsay, guesswork ?+ .". 
 " I know, however, that where we keep the body in good 
 working order, so that all parts grow old together, there is 
 no fear or dread of death. Death is as natural as life, and 
 just as good. I am ready and willing to go, confident that 
 the change will be a higher step, and that my spirit will 
 live somewhere, in some shape, and that the Great Power 
 that has cared for me all these years here will never desert 
 me there. 
 
 " The Great Architect of the universe is on our side He 
 is one with us, and I am ready to receive all changes that 
 this Great Architect thinks are necessary to complete the 
 work for which man was designed s+ $+ 
 " Man's business is this : Know thyself, and be at peace 
 with God."
 
 VERY great 
 institution is the 
 
 lengthened shadow 
 
 gf one man 
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
 
 SO HERE, THEN, ENDETH THE PREACHMENT 
 BY ELBERT HUBBARD, ENTITLED, "A LITTLE 
 JOURNEY TO THE HOME OF ANDREW TAYLOR 
 STILL." DONE INTO PRINT BY THE ROYCROFT- 
 ERS, AT THEIR SHOP, WHICH IS IN EAST 
 AURORA, ERIE COUNTY, NEW YORK, MCMXII
 
 Date Due 
 
 PRINTED IN U.S.A. CAT. NO. 24 161
 
 DR. C. E. STILL
 
 University of California 
 
 SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 
 
 Return this material to the library 
 
 from which it was borrowed. 
 
 100 
 
 5TH2 
 
 12
 
 ,^ 
 
 HT6 
 
 835V 
 
 n 
 
 doubt, tell 
 your pa- 
 tient the truth. 
 
 George Laughtin 

 
 IND, fix it, 
 and let it 
 alone. 
 
 Andrew Taylor Still 
 
 Univei 
 Sou 
 
 T.il