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| Dr.
Still, the Metaphysician |
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| The following paper by Ernest E. Tucker, D.O. highlights
the osteopathy of A. T. Still. Here it is published in full, as anything
shorter would be an abstraction weakening the understanding of Still’s
mind as understood by Tucker. This work represents Husserl’s phenomenology
and Goethe’s subjectivity both leading to the importance of developing
intuition. |
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Ernest E. Tucker, D. O., New York.
The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association. June. 1919. Pp. 486-498. |
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| Dr Still, the
Metaphysician Andrew Taylor Still, founder of the science of osteopathy, was a great metaphysical mind. We knew him best through his creation, the science of osteopathy, that most practical, direct and effective of healing sciences. But always the faculty is greater than the fact it creates, the machine that can make matches is more important than the matches it makes – for they are an end; but it can go on creating more matches forever. To understand the faculty that produced osteopathy is to re-discover it at its original sources, and to open the way to endless further discoveries of the same kind. That faculty was a great metaphysical faculty, and osteopathy is a great triumph of metaphysics. What is metaphysics, and wherein is osteopathy a great metaphysical triumph? Let us not get actual crystals mixed up with crystallography, the study thereof. Let us not get the metaphysical faculty, which Dr. Still had, mixed up with metaphysics the study thereof, of which he was as innocent as a babe is of logarithms. The study of physiology is one thing, and the living animal so studied is another. We cannot create new animals by a study of physiology; but we can liberate them from disease and bring them to a maximum of efficiency. We can not create a metaphysical faculty by the study of metaphysics, but we can develop the one ourselves by studying in Dr. Still, and use it to great advantage in the criticism of his science and in the creation of new sciences. |
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| Definition
of Metaphysics What then is metaphysics the study? Just a few words will be sufficient to get a viewpoint. Immanuel Kant is its great exemplar, to whom the reader is referred. Metaphysics is the study of the faculty of knowledge, of the scientific faculty is the science of sciences. It distils filters and refines all concepts until terms, as chemistry reduces all matter to elements. It eliminates all derived, secondary, acquired qualities, all probabilities and deals with things that are inherently necessary. For instance, it discovers that all of our mental concepts there are three elements never lacking, the concepts of time, of space, and of causality. It purifies these concepts of all accidents, and tries to give them ultimate definition – to find, that is, the final rock on which human knowledge and understanding rest. (Perhaps the underlying motive for this work was the attempt to discover Deity; and perhaps it has succeeded, though in a way strange enough by comparison with its original hope – but that is not part of this present story.) The irreducible elements of ideas it calls innate ideas, a priori concepts, intuitions; they represent the ultimate reality of thought, the ultimate foundation of science. What then is metaphysics, the faculty? It is in effect the same process applied not consciously to thought itself, but unconsciously to nature. It is the faculty by which the mind thinks scientifically. For instance, take the matter of mathematics. Mathematics is a pure product of the metaphysical faculty. We think of mathematics as existing in nature, since every quality of nature is definable ultimately in terms of mathematics (see the table of periodicity of the elements, &c.). But nothing could be further from the truth. There is and can be no true mathematics in nature for the simple and perfect reason that there are no uniform units in nature. No leaf is just like any other, no wave like any other, etc., ad infinitum. Now mathematics absolutely presupposes uniformity in that all one’s are like all other one’s, or there could be no two’s or any process built on them. There might be a pure mathematics of space and of time, except for the quality of force partakes of that of the object in which it is expressed. The metaphysical faculty of the human mind has, however, than this general subject of the relations and proportions in nature, purified it of its accidents (that is of its variable units) and deduced the pure science of mathematics toward which all natural phenomena approximate. This science gives it mastery over all phenomena of nature to a degree that makes it the mater science, next only to metaphysics itself, its parent. So this faculty does to other groups of phenomena. It may be said to select and construct the living truth behind the inert phenomena of nature. Nature in its upward struggle has perhaps been trying to purify its mathematical qualities and relations, as it has been trying to purify all of its subjects, and so to create broader and more perfect relations and faculties. This and many other side lines of thought suggest themselves to us, but not the place to follow them. Let us quote from Kant to further understand the value and importance of this faculty and this process. In his preface to the second edition of his epoch-making work the “Critique of Pure Reason,” he shows how the sciences of mathematics and physics were lifted up and set on the high road of pure sciences. “In the earliest times of which history has any record mathematics had already entered on the sure course of science, among that wonderful nation, the Greeks. … I believe that it must have remained long chiefly among the Egyptians, in a stage of blind groping after its true aims and destination, and that it was revolutionised by the happy thought of one man, who struck out and determined for all time the path which this science must follow, and which admits of an indefinite advancement. The history of this intellectual revolution (much more important in its results than the discovery of the celebrated passage around the Cape of Good Hope) and of its author has not been preserved. But Diogenes Laertius in naming the supposed discoverer of some of the simplest elements of geometrical demonstration – elements which according to the ordinary opinion do not have to be proved – makes it apparent that the change introduced by the first introduction of this new path must have seemed of the utmost importance to the mathematicians of that age, and it has been secured against the chance of oblivion." “A new light must have flashed on the mind of the first man (Thales, or whatever may have been his name) who demonstrated the properties of the isosceles triangle. For he found that it was not sufficient to meditate on the figure, as it lay before his eyes, or on the conception of it, as it existed in his mind, and thus attempt to get at a knowledge of its properties, but that it was necessary to produce a priori construction; and that in order to arrive with any certainty at a priori cognition, he must not attribute to the object any other properties than those which he had himself, in accordance with his conception, placed in the object.” Let us try and paraphrase the part of this that is important to us in our study of disease and of Dr. Still’s faculty for observation of disease. In order to be certain of his conclusions, he must not attribute to the object any qualities which do not follow by necessity from the subject as he has defined it. He must not attribute even objective qualities unless they are inherent in the subject. We must purify the subject, and stay within the strict and necessary attributes of it as a subject. Let A, B, C be any isosceles triangle; what properties necessarily belong to any isosceles triangle? Let X be any animal organism in a state of disease; what things are necessarily true of it? What things are inherently necessary in it from the very fact it is an animal organism and that it is in a state of disease? It is not sufficient to meditate on the subject before us, as it lies before our eyes, nor on the conception of it as it is formed in our minds, i.e., the symptom-picture but it is necessary to see the qualities that we attribute to it as necessarily true, a priori, in the very fact as we define it; such that leaving out the necessary conclusions, the original fact or definition can no longer obtain. This question we can answer to some extent right now, in advance of our study of Dr. Still’s mind; and for an illustration of what is meant by this method of study, shall attempt to do so. |
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| Living Organism Cannot
Manufacture Alien Processes First it must be evident that the forces at play in the diseased state must be the same as those which are normally present and functioning in the organism in a state of health. These may differ in degree and in other respects dependent on that difference of degree; but they must be the same forces. Nature cannot manufacture properties only to exist as disease. A bell must react as a bell at all times and under all circumstances; it cannot manufacture qualities by which it reacts as other than a bell. This is a true metaphysical proposition, inherently necessary because a thing cannot both be and not be. So a living organism must react as what it is, if it reacts at all; it cannot manufacture processes that are alien to it. Disease cannot, therefore, be a process or a product of forces alien to the normal body. The body may be put into an unnatural state by extraneous forces, as a bell may be broken by a cannon ball; but its reaction is true to its state. If it reacts at all it must react to qualities that are inherent in it – as we might say, a priori. Simple as this statement is, axiomatic, necessary, it yet has to do battle with a vast mass of lore that has accumulated around the subject of disease; and it has not, unless very recently, played any part at all in the general study of disease. It follows, however, that the state or condition of disease must necessarily be composed of two elements – the abnormal state into which the organism has been forced by some extraneous condition, and the reaction of that state; the former is the mechanical or chemical or nervous cause of the disease, the latter is the disease process itself. Of the two the former only is strictly abnormal state itself. This metaphysical principle, perhaps unconsciously to him, certainly not defined by him, appears to have been a large part of the background of Dr. Still’s conscious thought. Certainly it is to his glory that he first applied it with consistency and courage to the problems of disease, with profit to the world scarcely second to that conferred by “Thales or what ever may have been his name,” or by the discoverer of the passage around the Cape of Good Hope. Possibly the science of healing may be rescued from the blind groping and set on the highroad of pure science by this method. Let us make no mistake on one point. Dr. Still was pre-eminently a practical man. He reasoned on the basis of things that worked. “The God I worship demonstrates all His works.” It seems to me however, that it was the metaphysical background to his mind that lifted it to an apotheosis, a place with the gods; that made him to pick out and stick to the particular practical things that had eternal and elemental truth behind them; that emboldened him to bring all other “practical” things to the same tribunal; whence the rejection of the vast superstition of curative drugs, and the genesis of the true science of osteopathy. Approaching the study of metaphysics as a physician, particularly an osteopathic physician, having in mind at the same time both metaphysics and physiology and that inspiration for tracing things to their sources which is the inherent spirit of osteopathy, the two were seen in perspective of each other; and the source of the metaphysical principles, the innate ideas and intuitions, was seen in physiology. For instance: the eye and hand and the physical body generally are moved through space. They are so moved by the nervous system. The nervous system to successfully move them had to learn, automatically and mechanically, the laws of space. These never of themselves presented themselves as laws, as principles, but were present in the mechanical side of the nervous system, as nerve co-ordinations that correspond with the laws of space. The mind, without necessarily recognising them as laws, yet used them nevertheless and moved in obedience to them; thought in accordance with them; and at last discovered them (by a process of awakening its own subject side – but that, too, is not part of our story). When, however, we school children studied geometry, we found that we knew much of it already, intuitively; and that a great part of it lay just beneath the surface in what we call our subconscious mind. It had merely to be realised and to be given strength by exercise. |
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| Things
Taught to Sub-conscious Mind Many other things are taught to the subconscious surface, so to speak, of our conscious minds in the same way and by the same action – by its operation of our bodies. Thus it learned the laws of nature as expressed in the body; by the operation of its own faculties it learned the laws and conditions of thought. The things so taught are tremendous or transcendent value to us, and could we wholly define them in conscious thought, would be a body of arteries and propositions that would make our progress in science immeasurably more rapid. For they represent two factors – the things that were selected, developed and proved successful in the long school of evolution, and the master principles deduced therefrom. Let us for the moment consider the institutions, time and space, and see wherein they are due to the mechanism of the mind. The concept of time arises necessarily from a comparison of a past state with a changed present state. The only thing capable of performing that feat of memory; one might almost say the human memory. It alone is capable of retaining a past state, and in the same place (the memory) of progressing to a present state, and by comparing then to generate the concept of time. The same thing is true of space – the memory is the only thing capable of remaining in one place and at the same time progressing to another place and in comparing them to generate the concept of space. Or of comparing impressions received by different parts of the sensorium in one together so as to generate the concept of space. Thus, seeing problems of metaphysics and the facts of physiology at the same time, we correlate them and find the source of the metaphysical institutions in the physiologic functions. It may be said that all the laws that exist or operate in the human body have probably to some extent taught themselves to this subconscious side of our minds. It may be said, further, that all laws that are in the universe exist or operate in the living body. These reveal themselves in the consciousness as intuitions. The summation of these intuitions corresponds, doubtless, with what we call God. The practical operation of them, of course, constitutes the consciousness itself. The analytical study of them and the purifying of them as subjects constitute metaphysics. The unconscious application of them to problems of nature is the metaphysical faculty and has been the genesis of science. What authority rests in them, and how does that authority compare with present experimental science? Whatever authority the mind has rests in them. Our power to reason on the phenomena of nature rests solely in them. That authority, however, is the authority of things that work, that have worked so successfully that they have enabled us to reach our present state of development. They are themselves part of nature, that part which showed itself capable of being organised into such perfect co-ordination as we see in the living body and the consciously operating mind. Their authority we say is absolute, as far as it goes. They represent them as far as it does. They represent the thing that the Creator Himself laid down – the things that God did and the methods whereby He did them. We say that their authority is absolute as far as it goes – and that I think means that our concern should be not how far they may be trusted, but how far they can be carried; how far developed; for they are all that we have. They constitute the scientific imagination without which experimental science would be but a repetition of inert data that would lead nowhere. Let us repeat that they represent that aspect of nature which has reached the highest evolution and development of co-ordination and function; the part by which, whether for good or ill, we are limited in our efforts to think and to understand; that part of nature by means of which we observe and interpret nature again. Our observation and our reason are just as excellent as is our individual development and use of this, the constitution and background of them; and no more. |
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| Dr. Still’s
Application of Principles That these principles are the unconscious background of the thinking process of all of us is of course obvious in their very definition, as given here. But that they were more clearly felt, more courageously applied, more rigidly held to by Dr. Still than is usual – that is my theme; and that in my opinion is what most lifted him above the level of his time, and incidentally is what enabled him to become the founder of the science of osteopathy. Being innocent of all criticism of innate ideas, a priori cognitions, and the like, he couches his ideas in the language and the figure of his times, those of the Bible and ascribes the intuitions all to Deity. Nor, one might add, was he far wrong, since they represent the methods of the Creator. But his writings are as one might say riddled with God; in vast emotional passages, and in intellectual deductions. It takes courage to think always in terms of God; to carry ideas to their ultimate conclusion; to complete them as subjects, escaping from the “tyranny of facts;” to see in their universal aspect; but he had the courage. He had the courage and the mental energy. He had the courage both to cast away the false, to walk forth into the blank spaces of nothingness and absence of all idea, with only these intentions for guide, and also to trust and follow wherever they led in the perception of truth; given by this process of thinking. Again, first quoting Kant: (Preface): “A cursory view of this present work will lead to the supposition that its use is merely negative. That is in fact its primary use. But this assumes at once a positive value when we observe that it removes an obstacle which impedes and even threatens to destroy the use of practical reason.” Still, Autobiography, we read: “In sickness has not God left man in a world of guessing? Guess what is the matter? Guess what to give, and guess the result? And when dead, guess where he goes. I decided that God was not a guessing God but a God of truth…." “All His works, spiritual and material, are harmonious. His law of animal life is absolute. So wise a God has certainly placed the remedy within the material house in which the spirit of life dwells…." “Solemnity takes possession of the mind, a smile of love runs over the face, the ebbs and tides of the great ocean of reason, whose depths have never been fathomed, swell to your surging brain. You eat and drink; and as you stand in silent amazement, suns appear where you never saw a star, brilliant with rays of God’s wisdom, as displayed in man, and with the laws of life, eternal in days, and true as the mind of God Himself…." “Having proved to my mind that God into the minutiae of all his works…." “Every step that drops even one grain of drugs sees more Deity and less drugs…." “I took as my foundation to build on that the whole universe with its worlds, men, beasts, with all forms and principles of life, were formulated by the mind of an unerring God.” Anyone at all familiar with either his words will recognise the degree to which the intention of God, the sum of all intentions, lay back of them. Observe that it is in the study of metaphysics that the subjects are consciously purified. In the intuitive mind, which uses there in, they are not so purified. It is more natural, indeed, to have a blending of reason and emotion and other qualities, as we have here. But these quotations, and many others, some of them of an equally intense poetic power serve to illustrate the intuition of order; on which alone the faculty of reason can be built, and – applying the intuition to the world again – on which alone creation could have progressed; one which, incidentally, any study of a living body must be based. “If we have disorder and yet no disease, what is the use of order?” he asks in another work; and we must not forget also that these statements were designed not so much as an expression of accurate concepts, nor intended to stand as scientific dicta, but as the efforts of a teacher to arouse students’ minds to a perception of the same intuitions. |
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| Bodily Order
and Disorder These quotations all illustrate the negative side of intentions, attempting to clear away habits of thought that have lain across the path of our progress. To those not familiar with the therapeutic world into which these statements were launched, it will be necessary to suggest a corollary to this intuition, and phrase it thus – that disorder added to order makes disorder. Applied to the body, it means that experimenting and guessing injected into the perfect order of the body make disorder. And even when a body is already disordered, then the injecting of further disorder, other disorder, different disorder, still makes nothing but further disorder. This corollary to the intuition of order is seen implied in for instance the following quotations: “Soon I met a case of flux, and being a physician and familiar with the remedies recommended for such a disease, such questions as these arose: “What was God’s remedy? Has God a drug store? Does he use sedatives for flux? Does He use sweating powders, such as Dover’s and so forth? Does he use astringents?…” “As we are not willing to attribute to Deity anything but perfection,… we must see and know that His work of animal life is partly a failure before we are justified in our conclusion to assist Him to subdue even a fever by the use of a drug of any kind…. “Could you add or subtract a single bone, nerve, vein or artery that you know would be an improvement on the original? If not could you add and get beneficial results? Could you put machinery in there that would make better blood?" These statements are what we would call ordinary reasonings, withal excellent ones. As Kant says, all reasonings go back to intuitions for their basis. Incidental processes of reasoning refer back to the machinery of reasoning power for their testing. The laws and the conditions of life are the vastest generalisations that have yet been made on our earth, the vastest and the surest that are accessible to the mind of man. If they have taught anything at all to the conscious mind, it is the intuition of order – condition of the workings of the body and of mind itself as well. All of us in our reasoning processes go back to this ultimate foundation, and read our conclusions of incidental things in the light of them. The difference is only that in Dr. Still’s case he applied so much more clearly and faithfully and uncompromisingly these intuitions that they led him to larger results. In any case we see that his rejection of drugs as remedial agents was not on practical grounds merely, but on a priori cognitions, or the basis of the things that his own life and body had taught to his mind. |
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| Dr.
Still Relied on Correction of Disorder In place of drug medication, Dr. Still placed entire reliance on correction of disorders. For many reasons: first, because they worked; second, because he knew of nothing else that did work. But knew of nothing else that did work. But there seemed to be more than this, for he positively and often more violently opposed any other reliance. “Find it, fix it, and leave it alone,” said he in tones as of the decalogue. Looking, on account of this vigour, for something more than a mere practical reason, I again see an intuition. If this intuition were purified it might be called the intuition of the spontaneous. Life is spontaneous, as are all of its forces and processes. The force by which each part acts and reacts lies within it, and is wholly spontaneous, never compelled. Nothing in the body is compelled, except mechanically. The brain does not compel the body, nor yet does the body compel the brain; but both serve spontaneously a higher thing, the unity of the two. Nor is any organ or function of the body compelled; the energy of each lies within it, and its action is spontaneous, is a matter of co-ordinating – rather a matter of emulation and rivalry in service than of compulsion. That this is certainly an intuition of the mind, taught to it by this deep principle of nature, is seen clearly enough at least in love and in the higher ethics. But its teaching is offset by the lessons taught the conscious mind on its other side – its outside – by the events of nature and its contact with them. I need not review the meaning and the lessons of force in nature. Between these two concepts, that of force and that of the spontaneous, there is war, and has been perpetual war since first the intuitions of man began to sway his conduct. And the matter has been tried out on the vastest scale of war that the world has seen. It is intuition versus experience. Let us first clearly see it as a principle of nature, then as an intuition of the mind, and then indicate its meaning and value in therapeutics. Once we are caught in the grip of this intuition, we are likely to be led into all fields of human thought and endeavour, where its effect is seen to be tremendous, where its effect is seen to be tremendous, with a very great missionary zeal. As it begins to purify itself, we see a vast perspective of meaning. But though we may come to the border of these matters, and hint at them for the verification they give to our thesis, we may not here enter that territory. First to see it as a principle of nature. Let us begin with the simple and the familiar – “you bring a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink.” Extraneous forces can compel two objects to come together, but extraneous forces cannot compel them to react, much less to blend harmoniously, can indeed compel them to react, but only destructively, unless the forces that are involved in the reaction come from within, i.e. are spontaneous in the two. Only spontaneous forces can be constructive, can make a unity. It may be objected that the horse even when he drinks, forces the water to enter the system. That is true, but that is not constructive. The water does not become constructive until it enters the animal’s vital processes and then it does so only through spontaneous affinities existing in it and also in the tissues themselves. It is inconceivable that a unity should be created otherwise than by mutual spontaneous affinities. This is metaphysical proposition, inherently necessary; for otherwise we should have it built of qualities indifferent or negative, and in that case and to that degree it is certainly not a unity that would result. (It may be necessary to redefine the word unity as intended here; to differentiate mechanical unity from vital, artificial from natural. It would seem, however, that merely to call attention to the difference would be enough.) |
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| Creation
of Unity Let us use a more convincing illustration. Two and two it is said make four. But two and two may lie side by side on the table or the paper through eternity, and will never become four, lacking an internal spontaneous affinity for doing so. They will forever remain two books and two books, or other object – or for that matter, one book, one book, one book, and one book – no two exactly alike. Only in the mind do they become four divorced from any special objective content. Nothing in the mind compels them to become four; the mind only observes the result of the action that has taken place between its ideas, taken place spontaneously in obedience to that action of all vital things that makes unity within itself. The only effort that the mind makes is to associate with this spontaneous result certain arbitrary shapes of figures, indicative of the two and the two, and of the resulting four. Throughout the whole of nature this is true, though it would take us out of the preview of our thesis to review various aspects of nature and show its truth. Fascinating it would be to compare the concept of Deity as taught to the outside of the mind by the huge and overwhelming forces of nature, and that taught to the inside by the intuition of the spontaneous; and to show that the former, as we more and more define our concepts, reveal itself as corresponding to the early concepts of the devil, the latter emerging as the true concept of God. Interesting it would be to compare with this concept of God the one taught by Christ: “The kingdom of Heaven is within you;” “God is Love,” etc., i.e., spontaneous – no less than to compare with it the God-motive and what we may perhaps call the God-faculty evidenced in His healing. Suffice it for the present to compare with it Dr. Still’s own motive for healing, born perhaps of this same faculty in however less a degree. As an intuition of the mind it is taught to it first by this condition of all vital processes – this spontaneous blending, and by the morbid state that results when compulsion or force upsets the perfect balance of the spontaneous forces of life; but as an intuition it is taught also by the mechanisms of the mind itself. The will is of course an element of force, of compulsion; but its office is to change and wrap the internal perfect harmony to adjust life to its environment – it again has reference to the vast external forces. Its value is temporary and for emergencies. After the will has thus acted, it is necessary for these spontaneous forces of life and of thought to build anew the harmony and balance, including the changes induced by the will. But it is the office of the reason to eliminate this warping element of will and to construct its processes on the basis of perfect harmony and blending; allowing the concepts to reveal their own innate and spontaneous affinities; first with the unity of life on the inside and then with each other, revealing the laws of nature on the outside. Out of this dual process are our facilities built and expanded. To indicate the workings of this intuition in Dr. Still’s mind a few quotations will suffice; although we will find no violations of it – evidence of its footprints in intaglio everywhere. “The human body is a machine run by the unseen forces of life, and that it may run harmoniously it is necessary that there be liberty of blood, nerves, arteries, from the generating point to destination…." “God does not find it necessary to make these spots of beauty (in the peacock’s tail) one at a time; He simply endows the corpuscles with mind, and in obedience to His law every one of these soldiers of life goes like a man in the army, with full instructions as to the duty he is to perform…." “When we take up principles we get down to nature. It is ever willing and self-caring, self-feeding, and self-protecting….” As to the meaning of this intuition in therapeutics, it may be briefly summed up in Dr. Still’s dictum, “Find it, fix it, and leave it alone,” which being explained means, find the disordered state that has been brought about by some abnormal force; correct it; and leave the rest to the spontaneous forces of nature. The rejection of medicines except as protective, as emergency, and as substitution measures, was also an expression of the same principle. Whether the classic subject of metaphysics will bear the interpretation given to it here – that it is the things taught to the subconscious side of the mind by the machinery of the body and mind, I do not of course know. But certain it is that there are things so taught; and they correspond with the metaphysical cognitions. It appears natural that these things would be the best possible background for a study of the body and its diseases. It appears to be through them that osteopathy scored its great triumph. Further study of such intuitions and of their evidence in Still’s mind, and of their bearing on therapeutics would be interesting and valuable, but cannot be included in this paper. END |
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