Initial Perspectives For Professionals – D.O.

My first exposure to osteopathy was in high school, in the late 40’s. My brother-in-law (then) had repeatedly failed to get into medical school so he went to the Los Angeles college, and for years I had to hear him licking his wounds praising osteopathy, but they were only words. In fact, those were already the days when the M.D./D.O. amalgamation in California was imminent and relatively few of the students were seriously inclined to learn the skills that, from their perspectives, separated them from being “R.D.s” (real doctors)).

At U.C.L.A. Medical School none of my accumulated questions were answered. When I asked one of my orthopedic surgical professors about manipulation, he only answered with an expansive “superior” smile. But my indoctrination and my clinical failures provoked my increasing curiosity until, early in my GP days, I took a 20 hour very basic course in joint manipulation from which I promptly experienced a remarkable series of dramatic successes. Some of them are in Release From Pain and have drawn the occasional comment that such a sequence of events is not to be expected. I have to agree, but they happened, and I comment on that. From this vantage of time, over forty years later, it was, I believe, in effect, an ordination of destiny. (Please read Chapter Two of my book.)

My commitment took another quantum leap when I became one of the first “congenital” M.D.’s admitted to the staff of what had been built as a D.O. hospital (Bay Harbor Hospital, Harbor City, CA) adjacent to Wilmington, the Port of Los Angeles, where I practiced. After Ozzie (Chapter Two), I performed a series of cervical manipulations there under general anesthesia. (In fact, I was the only doctor on staff performing manipulations in the hospital.)

I studied with osteopaths whenever and wherever I could including Drs. Loren (Bear) Rex, Fred Mitchell, Jr., Larry Jones, the Phoenix group. When Jerry Bailes was Dean of the Pomona College, he appointed me an “Adjunct Professor of Orthopaedic Medicine.”

So I am very much aware of the pained osteopathic experience. I report all of it in Release From Pain, for which Dr. Frymann wrote the osteopathic Foreword. It was she who, when 95% of the osteopaths in California traded in their D.O. degrees for an M.D. diploma (for a few dollars in what was a diabolically conceived allopathic effort to end osteopathy, as you may know) commented that it was her impression that degrees were earned and not bought.

And, as you have, I have seen osteopathy retract from its roots and slip towards relinquishing its essential legacy. Over ten years ago, I encountered recent osteopathic graduates who hardly knew how to perform a basic manipulation.

If osteopathy is actively relinquishing its raison d’etre, then so be it. But, today, while, politically and culturally, the entire world is at another profound crossroads of history, as it has not been for many centuries, medicine is involved in its own battle and with proportionate consequences, which desperately requires commitment to the foundation whose supports are identical with the ideal of osteopathy. That is also what this endeavor is about - that asks you to be concerned about it, as well.

Please conceive of a world sounder in fundamental medicine. Please become part of the force that can begin to move medicine back onto its foundation. Please read Release From Pain, and, I hope, derive sufficient energy to – in your circumstance – (if this applies to you) seek a path that you will be able to look back from with a resurgence professional pride.