Dr. Andrew T. Still, founder of the American School of Osteopathy at Kirksville, Missouri, was a resident of Kansas for over twenty years, during which he farmed, practiced medicine and fought in the Civil war. He was a native of Lee County, Virginia, born in 1828, and the family moved to Tennessee when he was a young boy. He was educated in that state, for nearly three years attending Holston College, at Newmarket. As his father and older brother were physicians, he decided to take up the study of medicine himself. When qualified to practice he was of great assistance to his father, who had been a missionary to the Indians at Macon County, Missouri, for many years. In 1853 he accompanied his father to the Wakarusa Methodist Mission in Douglas County, Kansas, where he engaged in farming and the practice of medicine. He was a member of the Territorial House of Representatives in 1857. In the previous year he and his brother had donated 480 acres of land as a site for Baker University, Baldwin, and as he engaged in the lumber business about that time his sawmill cut much of the lumber used in its construction. Doctor Still served in Company F, Ninth Kansas Cavalry, from its organization in September, 1861, until it was dishanded in April, 1862. He then organized a company of militia and in May of that year was commissioned captain of Company D; Eighteenth Kansas militia. A few months later he was advanced to major, and subsequently served in the Twenty-first Kansas militia until it was dishanded in October, 1864. In 1874 he became an osteopath–the first in the world–and thereafter abandoned the use of drugs in his treatment of disease. His American School of Osteopathy at Kirksville, Missouri, had acquired world-wide fame.
