Excerpt from A Text Book of the Principles of Osteopathy

This book has been held in favor by members of the osteopathic profession for twenty years. This new edition, the fifth, has been prepared for publication at the request of the American Osteopathic Association and the Associated Colleges of Osteopathy. The following excerpt from the preface of the first edition indicates the author's viewpoint:

"It must be understood at the outset that the work is designed primarily for the student who is beginning to study the new method of healing. Hence to those who are already practitioners of that method the matter contained in the following pages may not seem particularly new nor satisfying in the way of suggesting ideas of an immediately practical nature. Yet we are not without hope that even to the latter class there are many points of interest which will help to throw light upon some of the vexing problems that continually arise in the experience of the busy practitioner.

"Neither should it be assumed that the work is intended to treat exhaustively the numerous questions of theory that are associated with the science. That is entirely beyond the scope of a work that is prepared especially for him who, under the circumstances of a comprehensive curriculum of study, crowded into a period of time all too short, must of necessity limit his reading in all subjects to those texts which give a comparatively brief treatment. This work, therefore, is rather a mere outline of the various subjects that are most closely related to the fundamentals of the science, with suggestions as to the direction further investigation should take.

"The various subjects outlined and the manner of their treatment are the result of the labor of the author, who has been especially devoted to the principles of osteopathy during his course as teacher for the past three years. In large part the work here presented is a revision of lectures delivered before classes in Pr…