Osteopathic physicians – docs you just have to love

February 21, 7:16 PMPhiladelphia Health ExaminerThomas Hartmann

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Dr. McAuley in his PCOM office (photo:  Thomas Hartmann)

An old Preston Sturges comedy from before World War II has its hero somewhere on America’s northern west coast, willing to travel all the way to Los Angeles “to see his osteopath.” “Really?” asks another character? “Who is he? I need an osteopath, too.”

It sounds like a joke, but the characters aren’t kidding. People are willing to travel miles to see a good osteopathic physician. Some of the Pennsylvania Dutch travel all the way to Wilmington, Delaware to see Todd Bezilla, D.O., one of the closest osteopathic physicians outside of Philadelphia’s College of Osteopathic Medicine (PCOM), since their religion does not advocate the use of conventional medicine.

It all started before the civil war, with the son of a minister named Andrew Taylor Still, who was brought up hating slavery as well as reliance on the conventional medicine of his time (these were the days of bloodletting and primitive drugs). In an effort to cure himself of a headache one day, Still tied a sling between two trees and fell asleep on the rope, waking up with his headache gone.

Thus he discovered the main principle of osteopathy: put into proper balance through anatomical adjustment, and the body can heal itself. Still, who rose to the rank of major in the Civil War, lightheartedly writes in his autobiography how close America came to losing its very own nascent medical science as bullets whizzed past and he urged his praying troops out of the trenches into battle.

Darren McAuley, D.O., of the OMM department of PCOM, tells the story of how he became an osteopathic physician. At the time he was studying as a senior in Vassar College’s library, and serving as an EMT with the local ambulance corps.

“A book fell down from the stacks and hit my roommate on the head,” he said. It turned out to be Still’s autobiography. After reading it, what with Still’s commitment to service and his passion to heal with his hands, he knew that he was called to become an osteopathic physician.

Similarly, Todd Bezilla, D.O., also a graduate of PCOM, is so committed to his field that he became a permanent resident of Canada to become the Director of Education of an Osteopathic program. He regularly commutes back and forth between there and his office in Wilmington so that he can teach in Canada and continue to see patients in Delaware. He also often invites osteopathic students and physicians from abroad to observe him practice in his office in Wilmington.

“My wife’s mother once remarked that I must have another woman,” he laughs. “In fact that woman is the brain child of Andrew Taylor Still, her name is Osteopathy”.