Andrew Taylor Still (1828-1917), was first a Methodist Minister, he was a Physician, served in the Union army, and was an Inventor. In 1874, he coined the term "Osteopathy", then he went on to open the first school of Osteopathy (ASO) in 1892 (now AT Still University) in Kirksville, Missouri.

Osteopathy, as it was founded in 1874, is based on an in-depth study of authentic human anatomy by a man with a mind equipped for mechanic understanding. He would see bones as support beams, muscles as activating forces, ligaments as cables, nerves as power supply, arteries as fuel and lubrication, veins and lymphatic vessels as effective waste management. He saw the body for what it is a "biological machine", but further more, he saw a self-sustaining biological machine. He reasoned that if life could be conceived, grow, sustain itself and heal for a large majority of the time, then there had to be obstacles that got in the way of these processes which conclude in illness. He then spent his time examining bodies, watching for disturbances in the natural processes. Quite rapidly, he realized that illness very often followed injury, be it traumatic injury or chronic injury.

"Andrew Taylor Still had been an MD for ten years when a devastating personal tragedy convinced him to stop prescribing the crude drugs of his day and seek a more effective method of medicine.

Believing there must be a better way to heal the sick than introducing toxic substances into the body, he embarked on a life long quest to decipher the riddles of health and disease, life and death. Combining the latest scientific knowledge with revolutionary intuition that the body innately contains all the remedies needed for curing, he developed a drugless method of healing effective across the whole disease spectrum."

​                             -At Still, From the dry bone to the living to the living man.  John Lewis