Osteopathic

Osteopathy is a type of alternative medicine, also called pseudomedicine, that emphasizes massage and other physical manipulation of muscle tissue and bones. People practicing osteopathy are referred to as osteopathic practitioners. Its name derives from Ancient Greek "bone" () and "sensitive to" or "responding to" (). There is no evidence that osteopathy is effective at treating anything other than low back pain. In the United States, osteopathic practitioners are legally restricted from referring to themselves as "osteopaths" to avoid confusion with osteopathic physicians who are medical doctors trained and certified to practice medicine as well as osteopathic medicine. Osteopathic practitioners, on the other hand, are trained only in manual osteopathic treatment, generally to relieve muscular and skeletal conditions.

In the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Australia and New Zealand, osteopathic practitioners are registered and regulated by law as therapists but may not practice medicine (although Germany, like Canada, allows US-trained osteopathic physicians to practice). Thus Britain's National Health Service advises that, while there is "good" evidence for osteopathy as a treatment for low back pain and "limited evidence to suggest it may be effective for some types of neck, shoulder or lower limb pain and recovery after hip or knee operations", there is no, or insufficient, evidence that osteopathy is effective as a treatment for health conditions "unrelated" to the bones and muscles, "such as headaches, migraines, painful periods, digestive disorders, depression and excessive crying in babies (colic)"; an explicit reference to the claims of osteopathic manipulative medicine.

A 2011 systematic review on osteopathic style manipulation, "failed to produce compelling evidence" for efficacy in treating musculoskeletal pain. Osteopaths are not certified for medical practice in Britain, and European osteopaths are not allowed to practice in the United States, lest they be mistaken for physicians who are still sometimes referred to as osteopaths there.

The practice of osteopathy began in the United States in 1874. The term "osteopathy" was coined by Andrew Taylor Still, MD, DO. Still was a physician and surgeon, a Kansas state and territorial legislator, a free state leader, and one of the founders of Baker University. He lived near Baldwin City, Kansas at the time of the American Civil War and it was there that he founded the practice of osteopathy.

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