Osteopathy: What's New (and Old) in American Medicine

Introduction

Jonn Salovaara

It's not new anymore: health-care centers continue to spring up with a variety of practitioners working together as a group -- M.D.s alongside acupuncturists, massage therapists alongside psychologists, and so on. Despite the logistical and accounting difficulties, the trend continues toward a future medicine that combines American Medical Association (AMA) - approved allopathic modalities with a variety of healing therapies ranging from chiropractic to nutrition to Traditional Chinese Medicine and beyond.

Meanwhile, osteopaths representing an older branch of American medical practice, are being recognized as practitioners of a different sort of "integrative medicine." Since the founding of osteopathy, its practitioners have integrated the best medical wisdom of the day with their own manual adjustment methods. Today, you may find an osteopath who embodies, as a single physician, a fairly wide range of complementary practices. At the very least, an osteopathy, will know about osteopathic manipulation techniques (OMT) in addition to standard allopathic procedures.

If you're interested in exploring alternative or complementary modalities, but are held back by the too-frequently-correct assumption that your insurance will only pay for allopathic physicians, osteopathic treatments may be covered. Osteopaths receive training equal in length to that give to M.D.s and are fully licensed in all fifty states. They can prescribe medicine and practice surgery if surgery's a requisite in their area of specialization. Because of their extensive training and full licensing, many insurance companies will pay for services osteopaths provide even if they won't pay for other kinds of non-M.D. treatments.

Dr. Richard A. Feely, a Chicago osteopath who concentrates in musculo-skeletal work, offers patients not only his knowledge of allopathic medicine, not only OMT, but also Japanese scalp acupuncture, auricular therapy (needle-lesss ear acupuncture), and herbal medicine. I asked Dr. Feely if there was an advantage to receiving a range of treatments from an individual physicians as opposed to receiving them from a group of co-practitioners. "For one thing," he said, "it's cheaper. It's also time efficient." Further, as opposed to limited-license practitioners, osteopaths tend to have a broader view of treatment options; they also know when so-called alternative methods are not indicated, in emergency cases when surgery or drugs are called for at once.

Despite its advantage in this regard according to Mary Ann Pagaduan at the American Osteopathic Association (AOA), a recent survey revealed that a huge percentage of Americans do not know what osteopathy is. This may be due in large part to the AMA's political ascendancy during the last century. But there's also a sort of naming problem. In terms of classical root of words, osteopathy sounds like a combination of the Greek words for bone and disease.

Osteopathy is not the study of bone disease, at least not in the sense most people attach to that term. It is rather, according to author Leon Chaitow, a complete health-care system characterized by the "recognition of the importance, in the overall economy of the body, of the musculo-skeletal system, its proneness to dysfunction...and the recognition of the ability of therapy to normalize such dysfunction by one or more of a variety of manipulative techniques."