Treatments and Practices in 19th Century American Medicine examines osteopathy’s origins as an alternative to early nineteenth-century orthodox medical practices, such as bloodletting, dosing and blistering. This exhibit also presents some of the other common alternatives utilized at the time in which osteopathy developed and Dr. Still’s own words involving those alternatives.
The collections of the Museum of Osteopathic Medicine include more than 100,000 objects, photographs, documents, and books dating from the early 1800s to the present (focused mainly on 1870–1940). The core of the collection consists of artifacts from A. T. Still's professional and private life, most of them donated by Dr. Still's daughter, Blanche Laughlin, and members of her family.
Since the founding of the Museum in 1934, other family members, DOs, and Museum supporters have donated many additional artifacts that reflect the ongoing history of the osteopathic profession. The research collections of the International Center for Osteopathic History (ICOH) also include many former holdings of the A.T. Still Memorial Library, for which the Museum assumed responsibility in 1997.
