These technoscientific facts underlie the decisions all physicians make with respect to adapting their care to each individual patient. Advancing our understanding of the human machine allows us to detect earlier and intervene with greater success on the pathologies that diminish health.
The beauty of everything we know culminates in the practice of our osteopathic art. Artists appreciate the nuance in constantly creating novel approaches to existing problems with grace. The osteopathic art is an integration of philosophy and science into an execution of medical care that enables a human organism’s internal propensity towards health to flourish versus the conventional idea that remedying the apparent symptoms cures the etiology of the disease. In realizing the artisanal nature of medicine we can constantly advance our craft over a lifetime of learning to be better.
It is important to note that in all of this I have not mentioned osteopathic manipulative treatment. As Carl Mconnell warned in 1917, “osteopathy was not simply a therapeutic measure of a manipulative type, but first and foremost an etiologic concept based upon anatomical and physiological completeness of the body.”2 Therefore, we must realize that manipulations are not themselves the osteopathic difference; rather they embody a real world application of the osteopathic concept. A good treatment requires a paradigm that a human being maintains a self-regulated homeostasis of health, an understanding of the patient’s integrated physical and biochemical milieu, and a technique that engages these principles. The fact is then readily apparent that the rationale behind our manual therapy is itself the difference that permeates osteopathic medicine.
In closing, it is only through awareness of why we do what we do and a tenacious preservation of those principles that we can usher in a new generation of osteopathic physicians to the world of 21st century medical care, but more importantly we will fulfill the mission the early osteopaths charged upon our profession only a century ago. I am realistic that this could present itself to be a struggle at every level for both myself and my DO colleagues as we grow into primary and specialty care, but I am optimistic that we can capitalize on the new single accreditation system in a way that brilliantly displays how we take a unique and necessary approach to caring for our patients.
MU-COM
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