STILL, Andrew Taylor, discoverer and founder of osteopathy : b. near Jonesboro, Va., 6 Aug. 1828; d. 12 Dec. 1917. With his father, Abram, Methodist minister and doctor, he re moved to Tennessee, and at the age of nine to Missouri. At 19 he married Mary M. Vaughn and in 1853 they removed to Kansas, where Mrs. Still died in 1859. He farmed, studied medicine in Kansas City and practised among the pioneers and Indians with his father who had followed him. He fought with John Brown in the border warfare; was elected to the legislature in 1857; was one of the founders of Baker University at Baldwin, Kan. In 1860 he married Mary E. Turner, who lived until 1910. In the Civil War he served in the cavalry and afterward became captain and then major in the 21st Kansas Volunteers which saw considerable service. Ever a student of nature, he decided that the God who made man had placed in the body everything necessary for health, without the use of drugs. He studied the anatomy of the animals he skinned, and dissected many an Indian body in his search for truth. The war interrupted his investiga
tions, but when three of his children died of spinal meningitis in 1864 he attacked the problem anew. In 1874 he announced the science of osteopathy (q.v.). For many years he waged a battle for recognition. For a while he practised as an itinerant doctor in Missouri, at times accompanied by one or more of his sons, and performed wonderful cures with his new science. In 1887 he settled in Kirksville, Mo., which had really been his home since 1875, and developed a large practice.
In November 1892, he opened the American School of Osteopathy, at Kirksville, which now gives a four-year course, and whose clinics and hospital draw patients from all over the United States as well as from Canada. Among his writings are