silvia tuscano | 26/10/2022
Washington J. Conner, specialist in the mechanics of childbirth
Born November 12 1866, Kirksville, Missouri, USA1 – Died July 12, 1956, Los Angeles, California, USA,2 DO
Son of a childhood friend of Andrew Taylor Still, Washington J. Conner decided to undertake the study of osteopathy by enrolling in the ASO in 1894. After being awarded the title of DO, he worked for five years in the Department of Obstetric in the clinic of Kirksville.
Dr W.J. Conner remembers that, when he was a child around 1874, his father received the visit of A.T. Still, a childhood friend, who was at that time engaged in an expedition to collect seeds and supplies for the community of Baldwin, which had lost everything due to a plague of locusts.
Subsequently Dr A.T. Still cured W. J. Conner’s mother from a semi-invalidity from which she had suffered for many years. Later he also resolved a disability of Conner himself, which the doctors had declared curable only with surgery, and he cured his brother’s foot after a doctor had operated on him seven times. Six members of Conner’s family became osteopaths.
He enrolled in the ASO course in the Autumn of 1894, together with 24 classmates, and he had the privilege to sit regularly at A.T. Still’s classes. In 1897 became a member of the teaching body3 and an untiring osteopathic practitioner in the clinic.4
Together with his brother D. L. Conner, also an osteopath, kept a clinic open during the Winter months in Phoenix, Arizona.5,6
After years of work in Kirksville, in May 1889 Davis moved to Kansas City and opened a practice there.6
An osteopath of the early days, after graduating he engaged in the activity of the Kirksville clinic. His name is often cited in the Journal of the American Osteopathic Association, as a speaker and a participant to conferences.
He was one of the speakers in the third annual assembly of the Association of the Osteopaths of the state of Missouri. In his contribution, later printed in the Journal of Osteopathy,7 he reminded the onlookers of the experience gained in eight years of career and the danger of drugs.
He took part in the debate on the importance of hearing the crack of the bones during osteopathic treatments, siding with those who, like A.T. Still, did not consider it relevant to the solution of the complaint.8
Of particular importance was his contribution to the Obstetrics field, a topic on which he published a small volume with his interpretation of A.T. Still ’s ideas concerning childbirth and the description (illustrated with photographs) of the position considered the most favorable for the passage of the fetus through the birth canal.
By way of example:
- Conner, WJ. “Get Back to Nature”. The Journal of Osteopathy, May 1901:134.
- Conner, WJ. “From the Standpoint of the Early Graduate”. The Journal of Osteopathy, July 1902:230
- Conner, W.J. “Ribs and Vertebrae Correlated”. JAOA, December 1906, v.6, n.4:149-150.
- Conner, W.J. “Appendicitis (Paper and Demonstration)”. JAOA, August 1909, v.8, n.12:502-06
- Like various other diplomates of the first hour, he was awarded a further diploma in 1897 after a new period of training, probably to adjust the hours of training to the new law disciplining the practice of osteopathy in Missouri, approved in March that same year.
- A small article of 1899 reports that Dr Washington J. Connor, “one of the first disciples of Dr A.T. Still“, after directing together with his brother an osteopathic clinic in Arizona, had moved for good to Kansas City, where he had opened a practice (Journal of Osteopathy, May 1899, v.5, n.12:595).
- There is news of a diatribe between Dr. Washington J. Conner and Dr. W. A. Connell, a homeopath, which arose in August 1902 about a recovered patient: each of the two credited the recovery to himself. The Osteopathic Physician, Aug.1902:6-7.
- Van Van Nada, M. L. (Ed.). (1906). The Book of Missourians: The Achievements and Personnel of Notable Living Men and Women of Missouri in the Opening Decade of the Twentieth Century. TJ Steele.pp.145-46.
- https://it.findagrave.com/memorial/28474324/washington-jarvis-conner
- Walter, Georgia Warner. The First School of Osteopathic Medicine: A Chronicle. Printed by Thomas Jefferson University Press at Northeast Missouri State University, 1992 (published for A.T. Still University-©Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine – Centennial Celebration 1892-1992):30.
- The Journal of Osteopathy, January 1898, vol. 4, n.8:389.
- The Journal of Osteopathy, November 1898, vol. 5, n.6:304.
- The Journal of Osteopathy, May 1899, vol. 5, n.12:595.
- Conner, WJ. “From the Standpoint of the Early Graduate”. The Journal of Osteopathy, July 1902:230.
- Conner, W.J. “The Significance of Certain Peculiar Sounds Emanating from the Spine during Osteopathic Treatment”. JAOA, December 1904, v.4, n.4, :166-167; Conner, W.J. “The Hypothesis of the “Pop” as related to the Anatemo Osteopathic Lesion”. Journal of Osteopathy, August 1904, v.6, n.3:5-7.
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