Andrew Taylor Still grew up in Tennessee and Missouri in the early 1800s and got what education he could from local schools and his father, a Methodist minister. Early on, he became interested in medicine and in 1853, he settled at the Wakarusa Mission, a reservation near Kansas City, Kan. He treated Indians and studied anatomy by dissecting the bodies of those who died in the neighborhood. He later studied at the Kansas City School of Physicians and Surgeons and helped to treat the wounded during the Civil War. When three of his children died of spinal meningitis, he theorized that diseases are due to abnormalities in or near the joints in the body and should be treated not by drugs but by manipulations of the body to allow the body to heal naturally. In 1892, he established the American School of Osteopathy in Kirksville, Mo., where he taught up until his death on Dec. 12, 1917.

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