Bruno Bordoni and Allan R. Escher Jr.

The osteopathic manual approach and osteopathic medicine (OM) were conceived and built from the studies and experience in the nineteenth-century of Andrew Taylor Still, DO. According to Dr. Still, “Osteopathy, or osteopathic medicine, is a philosophy, a science, and an art”. The foundations of OM emphasize the fact that osteopathy should not be associated, from an intellectual and methodological point of view, as a branch of medicine, the latter being the dispensation of drugs and surgery; OM is a complete and independent system of care.

… the shape of a structure influences the function of the same structure, just as the function equally influences the shape of the structure. According to new information in the embryological and genetic fields, it is not the binomial form-function that is decisive for forming a salutogenic environment but, rather, the position.

… The sliding capacity of the various tissue layers and between the different body components, up to the possibility of movement between cells is the salutogenic stimulus to allow the circulation of fluids, the biochemical exchange, and the adequate management of the multiple internal and external stimuli that perturb the body living. Movement is allowed by space and space is life”

… To conclude, the osteopathic principles could be: the body is the whole; the body continuum merges with everyone’s body continuum and penetrates the environment in which one lives; the body posses self-regulatory mechanisms that are self-healing in nature; the position of a body structure decides its form and function; rational treatment is based on these principles.