The history of osteopathic medicine should be taught objectively—examining the environment in which the profession began, its growth and development; looking at its relative strengths and weaknesses over time; and focusing on different challenges that the profession has faced and is facing today.
Students will come to appreciate the history of the osteopathic medical profession from understanding the social, economic, cultural, political, and medical forces and contexts that have shaped the profession's development. Learning specific dates may be useful to constructing a chronology of events, but this is not in itself history. And learning dates without a comprehension of the meaning of events has no especial value to understanding either the profession or the social movement students are about to enter. It is not dry facts that students should be learning. Rather, they need to understand dynamic historical processes and grasp the living, breathing, evolving phenomenon that is osteopathic medicine.
To this end the AOA Committee on Osteopathic History and Identity proposes that all students of osteopathic medicine become familiar with the following: