Andrew Taylor Still: being a little journey to the home of the founder of osteopathy by Elbert Hubbard

Publisher: The Roycrofters’ Shop, Est Aurora, New York.

Year of publication: 1912

Number of pages: 28

Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915) was an American writer, philosopher and artist. In fourteen years he wrote 182 short biographies, included in the series “Little journeys to the homes of the Great.” In one of these journeys he went to Kirksville.

In this very short volume of only 28 pages, Hubbard affirms that it is not possible to explain osteopathy in a few lines, but that he had the intention to provide the reader with a general idea of Dr Andrew Taylor Still‘s work.

The narration starts from the years preceding the Civil War and illustrates some episodes of Still’s childhood and adolescence, while outlining his character. 

Hubbard claims to know Dr Still well. For many years he had followed him, heard him talking in public, seen him work on patients and talked to him while walking together in the woods, along the streams and in the field. 

According to Hubbard, Still was more interested in life than medicine, in health than sickness. His thoughts were often concentrated on the marvels of nature. He had founded the school for the need to meet the demand of patients arriving in excessive numbers for his forces alone.

Hubbard describes Kirksville in 1912, for how he had observed it during a permanence of two days. On that occasion he recalls Dr Andrew Taylor Still, sitting on the veranda in the pale October sun, surrounded by the magnificence of the colors of the trees that were losing their leaves. 

Still had made a brief speech noting how the school and clinic were going on without requiring his intervention any longer, and recalling how the times in which he knew all students and called them by their names belonged to the past.

Still also affirmed not to fear death, which he considered as natural as life, and to be ready to die, convinced that his spirit would continue to live in some other place or in a different shape, and that the Great Power that had always assisted him during his life on earth would have never abandoned him. “The Great Architect of the universe is on our side – He is one with us, and I am ready to receive all changes that this Great Architect thinks are necessary to complete the work for which man was designed. Man’s business is this: Know Thyself and be at peace with God.”

Strengths: a precious small volume, pleasant to read and providing a lot of details on Andrew Taylor Still from the point of view of a layman.

Weaknesses: it is a booklet written in a journalistic style, a sort of long article on AT Still.