Kirksville museum paves the way

In the first of two rooms of the first school of osteopathic medicine, located at A.T. Still, there are just four wooden chairs gathered around a single patient table.

The replica is a part of the Museum of Osteopathic Medicine, the only such museum in the world, which preserves the teachings and displays the progress of a field that was first taught in Kirksville, more than a century ago. Since the school's first day in 1892, the curriculum's reach has grown and now is taught in 29 U.S. universities and dozens more across the world.

"Anyone that practices this can actually trace themselves back to Kirksville where we set up the first school, and the first students began, and that's unique in health care," said Jason Haxton, director of the museum. "In our profession, we all begin and branch off of one point."

Today, the difference between osteopathic medicine programs and Doctor of Medicine programs is often a topic of debate, but Haxton said there is a distinct difference in the way each approaches treatments.

"We have all the education that a medical doctor would have, plus [200] to 300 extra hours of understanding the structure of the body," Haxton said.

Haxton said their extra training allows osteopathic doctors the option of treating patients with "manipulations," which aim to put the body back into perfect alignment to cure a variety of symptoms.

The museum's contents reflect this approach to medicine. One area displays various patient tables that were used through the years to help doctors perform manipulations.

The museum also is home to one of four dissected nervous systems in the world, encased by glass and displayed next to a replicated nervous system in a glass mannequin.

Truman professor of biology Brenda Moore said she occasionally takes students to the museum and values it as a teaching resource.

"It isn't that I'm promoting osteopathy as opposed to allopathic medicine — it's just that it's here," Moore said. "The museum has some sort of interesting tools of the trade from years ago, and some interesting information about Andrew Still."

Alternative medical treatments were popular in the mid-to-late 1800s, as Andrew Taylor Still formulated his ideas about how to treat patients. One practice, named "blistering," involved inducing burn blisters in patients so the blisters eventually could burst — freeing the illness. Other doctors advocated hydropathy, through which patients were asked to bathe in and drink excessive amounts of water.

Still paid close attention to anatomy, approaching the body as a cohesive unit and developing a belief that most everything could be cured without drugs or surgery. The key, he said, was to "find and correct anatomical deviations that interfered with the free flow of blood and ‘nerve force' in the body," according to the museum's website.

After receiving criticism for his way of thinking in several towns, Still moved to Kirskville and opened a medical office on The Square in 1875. There, he found more success and was persuaded to open the first school of osteopathic medicine — now known as A.T. Still University.

In the 1920s, Haxton said the university began collecting and displaying noteworthy developments in osteopathic medicine, but it wasn't until the 1960s that A.T. Still students and their spouses began actively pursuing ways to expand the museum.

Today, the museum has grown to employ a full-time staff and a part-time staff of students from both Truman and A.T. Still.

"I'm definitely impressed by how much the staff knows," said Truman senior Danielle DiGiacomo, who works at the museum. "They have a really good background on the medicine [and] the doctors that they have information on. I've worked for a few other museums and this one's probably the most on top of … how to do it properly."