1942: Osteopathy

The participation of osteopathic physicians in both military medicine and civilian health activities, with radical changes from the procedures of normal times, including prehabilitation and rehabilitation both of military men and defense workers, brought about changes in their practice, as in that of all other doctors, and also in the steps they take to keep professionally abreast of the times. In various states, from California to New York, review courses were provided emphasizing the new problems and ways of handling them.

Programs of conventions have been changed radically, and the annual national gathering, July 1943, is to be a War Service Conference and Clinical Assembly. Interest on the part of osteopathic physicians in meetings of this type is shown in that nearly all state conventions reporting in 1942 set attendance records, and the national meeting in Chicago was among the largest in the history of the profession.

Governmental agencies directing the utilization and distribution of manpower for military and civilian needs have continued to take a long range view, insisting upon placing and retaining men and women in positions of maximum individual service. This has included not only the care of men in the armed forces, but also prehabilitation and rehabilitation, military and civil, already mentioned. It follows that not only are osteopathic physicians classed by the War Manpower Commission as being in an essential occupation, but also osteopathic and pre-osteopathic students, along with others training to be physicians of other schools, have been consistently kept in college.

Classes entering osteopathic colleges in the summer and fall of 1942 outnumbered those entering in the fall of 1941 as they, in turn, outnumbered those entering in 1940. Of course this was in part because vocational guidance activities were directed to the matriculation of those men who for one reason or another could not be engaged in military activities, and of women.

This year regulations were put in final form further to standardize pre-osteopathic college courses. Two years of such work has been required for matriculation in all the colleges, but in three the content of the courses was not expressly specified. Such minimums are now set up.

Osteopathic as well as other physicians have had to arrange their time and utilize it to the best advantage. This has called for more and larger hospitals, and financial campaigns in that direction have been successful in several localities.

The need for health education of the public continues to be recognized and the use of health broadcasts on the radio and the dissemination of health information through newspapers has continued, as well as instruction in such lines as first aid.

These pages last year reported the work of various specialty boards, to which there were added this year boards for specialists in obstetrics and gynecology, and for internists. The scope of practice of osteopathic physicians, and the range of activities in which they find themselves engaged, is indicated by the names of the bodies allied with the American Osteopathic Association, which met in 1942. The American Osteopathic Society of Ophthalmology and Otolaryngology, the International Osteopathic Society of Ophthalmology and Otolaryngology and the American Osteopathic Society of Proctology met in Detroit, and the American College of Osteopathic Surgeons convened in Kansas City. The other allied bodies which met in Chicago included Neuropsychiatrists, Internists, Obstetricians, Pediatricians, Herniologists, Orthopedic Surgeons.