This article is based on the following excerpt from a classical osteopathic book written in 1918. The book is titled Something Wrong by George V. Webster, D.O.
“Something is wrong or things would go right!
When your automobile backfires, you know for a certainty something is wrong. Some small part needs adjustment. You naturally seek the services of the mechanic at the garage, if you are not a “fix-it” genius yourself. You or the mechanic or any other sane person would not dream that the condition might be corrected by pills deposited at intervals in the gasoline tank.
When mother’s electric washer will not run with the current on, does she send for the painter to decorate it with a new coat of paint? Absurd! Yes, but didn’t that same mother smile an acquiescence when her daughter’s sprained and dislocated ankle was painted with liniment?
Is it possible for the proprietors of human brains to be less reasonable regarding their own physical mechanism than they are about the disorders that appear in their everyday machinery?
Certainly, something is wrong or things would go right!
[…] With the mechanism of our body perfect, the chemicals which our [body] produces for its own use will be faultless. […] If people cogitated as logically about their physical something wrongs as they do concerning the faults of man’s inventions, many bodily infirmities would be correspondingly abbreviated.”
When reading this text, one of the main principles of osteopathy stands out: structure and function are reciprocally interrelated. This means that all body functions depend on its physical structure (i.e. bones, muscles, ligaments, etc.). In other words, the same way that all parts of your car have to be intact and in the right place in order for your car to work, so do all your physical anatomical parts in order for your body to work.
This is why it makes sense to put the physical parts of the body back into place or, as a last resort, replace the part that can no longer work, whenever there is something wrong. So why is it that many of us will resort to taking pills or applying lotions and ointments when something ails us? We can spend hours debating this point, and there is no doubt that modern medicine has no choice but to intervene in certain cases. However, in the end, a logical person will always conclude that the answer to our health concerns is in the anatomy.
Comentários