Reddit mentions of The DOs: Osteopathic Medicine in America

Osteopathy in Europe != osteopathy in the US. One is exclusively manipulation, the other is a full fledged, fully trained, medical doctor who took an extra class on manipulation (albeit at the cost of less basic science classes and possibly a rotation in manipulation in lieu of one in something else). Most DOs don't use manipulation to any significant degree.

The history behind it is interesting. I refer you to Norman Gevitz's The DOs. In short, the late 1800s/early 1900's had a lot of wonky areas claiming to be medicine. Things like electricity, magnetism, naturopathy, old school allopathy, homeopathy, etc. Many of the better aspects of these fields consolidated under the allopathic banner and with the Flexner report, most of the ones that didn't were regulated out of mainstream existence. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the report was commissioned by the AMA and critiqued by many as an example of regulatory capture.

For some reason osteopathy tended to remain it's own thing, and while many osteopathic schools closed due to Flexner report, enough were found competent to teach medicine and flexible enough to change curriculums as needed, and remained open to have a significant influence in certain areas of the country and the field developed as a kind of offshoot of the allopathic model with their own board exams and residency training. In WW2 there was a shortage of MDs in the army so they allowed DOs in which greatly increased mainstream acceptance. In the 1950s there was talk of integrating the California osteopaths and/or schools into the allopathic organization which culminated in UC Irvine being bought out and the california DOs being able to buy an MD title. This led to more mainstream acceptance though with the large cost of losing one of our best schools and much influence in the west coast. In short it's a complex, long, and hard fought history that got us where we are.

As far as EBM and the litigious culture, I honestly have no idea why most of this stuff is reimbursed. There really isn't much level 1 research on the stuff and the cochrane review for LBP pain and manipulation says its no better than other interventions. A tylenol is a lot cheaper than an office visit... I don't mean that in a disparaging way but just to highlight the lack of quality research.

I know you're admitted and all, but regardless, I wholely recommend reading through The DO's Even if you are going to an MD school, it really gives a historical and present day context to the DO/MD differences, similarities and motivation for doing so. It also explains the phenomenon on why so many people believe so adamantly into homeopathy/naturalistic medicines.

I've only attended medical school so far, unfortunately. Everything I know about chiropractors come from my professors, personal experience, and various articles and books.

I think the history of medicine is fascinating, especially since the branches now seen as "alternative" like homeopathy, magnetic therapy, chiropractic, and osteopathy had really good reasons for existing back when MDs thought heavy-metal poisoning was a panacea and rusty hacksaws would suffice for limb amputations (aka the late 19th century).

The M.D. was the first doctorate awarded in the US. That is, it pre-dated the PhD in America by about 100 years.

The D.O. came about when a group started offering chiropractic treatment for illness in lieu of pharmaceuticals, believing that all disease came from musculoskeletal misalignment. The D.O.s started having pretty good outcomes compared to the M.D.s who were randomly dispersing toxic meds they knew little about. Eventually, educational requirements for docs began getting more intense and the D.O.s followed the M.D.s in increasing the rigor of their schooling. They became parallel, redundant degrees. Source: http://www.amazon.com/The-DOs-Osteopathic-Medicine-America/dp/0801878349/ref=sr_sp-atf_title_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1373072965&sr=8-1&keywords=the+dos

As a side note, I thought you guys in Australia still went by "Doctor So-and-So." Isn't that still using an inflated title?

You could buy this book but if you don't want to just read the wikipedia article on Osteopathic Medicine.