What is the difference between osteopathy and osteopathic medicine, and between an osteopath and osteopathic physician?
A4: It is easy to be confused concerning the many “osteo” words. The difference is quite simple. The profession was discovered in 1874 by Andrew Taylor Stil1, M.D. as “osteopathy.” As mentioned above, this is a combination of the words “bone” and “suffer.” Literally meaning, “bone suffering.” At the time of its founding, the system did not include medical pharmacology so only manual manipulative “medicine” was practiced by its students. However, over time as drugs became better researched and safer to use (early 1900s), osteopathy began incorporating medications and surgery into their treatment. With the osteopathic profession now offering all medical treatment modalities in additional to osteopathic manipulation, the American Osteopathic Association (the legislating body of osteopathic medicine) decided in 1960 to change the name of the profession to “osteopathic medicine” and the name of the practitioners from “osteopath” to “osteopathic physician.” Outside the USA, the terms “osteop
