Andrew Taylor Still

Book excerpt: As a young doctor in the mid-1800s, Andrew Taylor Still cared for sick and injured people on the frontier and on the battlefields of the Civil War. But he thought the common practices of bloodletting and using toxic medicines did more harm than good for sick people. He knew there had to be a better way to help them. Andrew studied books and examined the natural world around him to make a new medical model, discovering a way to manipulate muscles, bones, and nerves with just his hands. At first, people thought his ideas were crazy, but today the medical system he developed, osteopathic medicine, is used to treat sick people all around the world.