1939: Osteopathy

Scientific studies directed toward improvements in the art of healing, both in the technique of its diagnostic and therapeutic methods and in its service to public health and welfare, marked the progress of osteopathy in 1939. The American Osteopathic Association set up a Committee on Research with a director who, as a part of his duties, may correlate the research enterprises in osteopathic colleges, hospitals, clinics and laboratories more directly concerned with research problems; guide these efforts in such a way as to avoid duplication, and carry forward the efforts already made by the former A. T. Still Research Institute and other such bodies over a period of several decades. It is the plan also to map rather definitely the course of future research to the end of a better understanding of underlying principles and their application in practice.

There also was completed in 1939 the organization of the Osteopathic Research Trust, which was set up to receive and administer funds from foundations and from philanthropically inclined individuals, and to guarantee to the sources providing such funds that they would be devoted in the most effective manner to efforts contributing to the public good. Also the Committee on Endowments, under the Committee on Public and Professional Welfare of the American Osteopathic Association, continued its work for making known the field which osteopathy offers to those who would contribute funds to enterprises directed to public welfare.

In the way of practical applications of the art of healing to the service of humanity, the American Osteopathic Association cooperated with, and contributed to, the thought and accomplishments of the National Council of Mothers and Babies, and also participated in the White House Conference on Children in a Democracy. Further, at its annual convention in Dallas it voted to continue its attitude announced a year earlier as a 'readiness to cooperate with employers and employees, with the representatives of lay organizations, with other medical organizations and with those departments of government interested in the problem, in working out a program of care (which will include for individuals the option of free choice of physician) to those not now receiving adequate medical care because of medical indigency.'

In addition to these efforts on the part of the profession as represented by its national association, individual and local group public service activities continued. Sick and injured persons with limited incomes have been served for years by the New York Osteopathic Clinic and the Osteopathic Association Clinic, London, England. Somewhat similar institutions have been established within recent months in Toronto and in Buffalo, where those who cannot pay the regular charges are given the advantage of service by the profession in those cities. Many smaller communities have given similar service for years.

Committees of the Association continue to study the various aspects of hospital service plans, medical service plans, group practice organizations, etc., as means of development for the profession, and of service to the people.