The profession was founded by Andrew Taylor Still, a 19th-century American physician (MD), Civil War surgeon, and Kansas territorial and state legislator.

[6] These practices derive from the belief, common in the early 19th century among proponents of alternative medicine, that the body's natural state tends toward health and inherently contains the capacity to battle any illness.

[17] The foundations of this divergence may be traced back to the mid-18th century when advances in physiology began to localize the causes and nature of diseases to specific organs and tissues.

Heroic medicine became the convention for treating patients, with aggressive practices like bloodletting and prescribing chemicals such as mercury, becoming the forefront in therapeutics.

After experiencing the loss of his wife and three daughters to spinal meningitis and noting that the current orthodox medical system could not save them, Still may have been prompted to shape his reformist attitudes towards conventional medicine.

[21] Still set out to reform the orthodox medical scene and establish a practice that did not so readily resort to drugs, purgatives, and harshly invasive therapeutics to treat a person suffering from ailment,[16] similar to the mindset of the irregulars in the early 19th century.

Thought to have been influenced by spiritualist figures such as Andrew Jackson Davis and ideas of magnetic and electrical healing, Still began practicing manipulative procedures that intended to restore harmony in the body.

[23] He named his new school of medicine "osteopathy", reasoning that "the bone, osteon, was the starting point from which [he] was to ascertain the cause of pathological conditions".

[24] He would eventually claim that he could "shake a child and stop scarlet fever, croup, diphtheria, and cure whooping cough in three days by a wring of its neck.

Many of osteopathic medicine's manipulative techniques are aimed at reducing or eliminating the impediments to proper structure and function so the self-healing mechanism can assume its role in restoring a person to health.

This soft tissue can become restricted due to psychogenic disease, overuse, trauma, infectious agents, or inactivity, often resulting in pain, muscle tension, and corresponding diminished blood flow.

[47] In 2013, a Cochrane review reviewed six randomized controlled trials which investigated the effect of four types of chest physiotherapy (including OMT) as adjunctive treatments for pneumonia in adults and concluded that "based on current limited evidence, chest physiotherapy might not be recommended as routine additional treatment for pneumonia in adults."

[50] A 2013 systematic review found insufficient evidence to rate osteopathic manipulation for chronic nonspecific low back pain.

[53] The New England Journal of Medicine's 4 November 1999 issue concluded that patients with chronic low back pain can be treated effectively with manipulation.

[57] MDs regarded that osteopathic treatments were rooted in "pseudoscientific dogma", and although physicians from both branches of medicine have been able to meet on common ground, tensions between the two continue.

[15] In 1988, Petr Skrabanek classified osteopathy as one of the "paranormal" forms of alternative medicine, commenting that it has a view of disease which had no meaning outside its own closed system.

[58] In a 1995 conference address, the president of the Association of American Medical Colleges, Jordan J. Cohen, pinpointed OMT as a defining difference between MDs and DOs; while he saw there was no quarrel in the appropriateness of manipulation for musculoskeletal treatment, the difficulty centered on "applying manipulative therapy to treat other systemic diseases"—at that point, Cohen maintained, "we enter the realm of skepticism on the part of the allopathic world.

The article attracted a letter from the law firm representing the AOA accusing Barrett of libel and demanding an apology to avert legal action.

[15] In response, Barrett made some slight modifications to his text, while maintaining its overall stance; he queried the AOA's reference to "the body's natural tendency toward good health", and challenged them to "provide [him] with adequate scientific evidence showing how this belief has been tested and demonstrated to be true.

"[6] In 2004, the osteopathic physician Bryan E. Bledsoe, a professor of emergency medicine, wrote disparagingly of the "pseudoscience" at the foundation of OMT.

[61][62] Science writer Harriet Hall stated that DOs trained in the U.S. are Doctors of Osteopathic Medicine and are legally equivalent to MDs.

In Australia, Denmark, New Zealand, Switzerland, the UAE and the UK, non-physician manual medicine osteopaths are regulated by statute; their practice of osteopathy requires registration with the relevant regulatory authority.

Osteopaths are not considered physicians or medical doctors in Australia, rather as allied health professionals offering private practice care.

The majority of private health insurance providers cover treatment performed by osteopaths, as do many government based schemes such as veteran's affairs[66] or workers compensations schemes[67][68] In addition, treatment performed by osteopaths is covered by the public healthcare system in Australia (Medicare)[69] under the Chronic Disease Management plan.

A 2018 large scale study, representing a response rate of 49.1% of the profession indicated the average age of the participants was 38.0 years, with 58.1% being female and the majority holding a Bachelor or higher degree qualification for osteopathy.

[86] Hesham Khalil introduced osteopathy in the Middle East at a local physical therapy conference in Cairo, Egypt in 2005 with a lecture titled "The global Osteopathic Concept / Holistic approach in Somatic Dysfunction".

In December 2007 the first Workshop on Global osteopathic approach was held at the Nasser Institute Hospital for Research and Treatment, sponsored by the Faculty of Physical Therapy, University of Cairo, Egypt.

[90] Since the early 1970s, osteopaths have been practicing in Belgium, during which time several attempts have been made to obtain an official status of health care profession.

They have an average total of 1200 hours of training, roughly half being in manual therapy and osteopathy, with no medical specialization before they attain their degree.

Each of the fifteen health professions regulated by the HPCA act work within the "Scope of Practice" determined and published by its professional board or council.