D.O. or Do Not: The Osteopathic Physician's Journey for Premed & Medical Students

Episode 41: Jason Haxton M.A., D.O. (h.c.) Director of the Museum of Osteopathic Medicine

April 06, 2021 Season 1 Episode 41
D.O. or Do Not: The Osteopathic Physician's Journey for Premed & Medical Students
Episode 41: Jason Haxton M.A., D.O. (h.c.) Director of the Museum of Osteopathic Medicine
Show Notes Transcript

Welcome to the first episode in our series highlighting physicians for  Osteopathic Awareness Month. Today, we interview Jason Haxton, who has been awarded an "honorary D.O." because of his role as the director of the Museum of Osteopathic Medicine in Kirksville, MO. for the past 20 years. Today, he will share with us some of the fascinating history of osteopathy.

The collections of the Museum of Osteopathic Medicine include more than 80,000 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 the professional and private life of A. T. Still, the founder of osteopathy; most of the artifacts were donated by Dr. Still's daughter and her family members.

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. Of note, when we interviewed Dr. Darnita Anderson Hill last month, author of "Blacks in Osteopathic Medicine: An Idea Whose Time Has Come," she found the resources of the museum invaluable to her writings. We hope you enjoy this episode.

My name is Dr. Ian Storch. I'm a board certified gastroenterologist and osteopathic physician,

and you are listening to DO or do not. If you're interested in joining our team or

have suggestions or comments, please contact us at doordonotpodcast.com. Share our link with

your friends and like us on Apple Podcasts, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. We hope you

enjoy this episode. Welcome to the first episode in our series highlighting physicians for Osteopathic

Awareness Month. Today we interview Jason Haxton, who has been awarded an honorary DO because of

his role as the director of the Museum of Osteopathic Medicine in Kirksville, Missouri,

for the past 20 years. Today he will share with us some of the fascinating history of osteopathy.

The collections of the Museum of Osteopathic Medicine include more than 80,000 objects,

photographs, documents, and books dating from the early 1800s to the present, focused mainly on 1870

to 1940. The core of the collection consists of artifacts from the founder of osteopathy,

A.T. Steele's professional and private life, most of them donated by A.T. Steele's daughter 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

also include many former holdings of the A.T. Steele Memorial Library, for which the museum

assumed responsibility in 1997. Of note, when we interviewed Dr. Darnita Anderson-Hill last month,

author of Blacks in Osteopathic Medicine, an ideal whose time has come, she has found the

resources of the museum invaluable to her writings. We hope you enjoy this episode.

Today we have a very special guest, Jason Haxton, who is the director of the Museum in Kirksville.

Jason, thank you so much for being with us today. And like I said, I've heard your podcasts and shows

and I'm thrilled that I get to be on it. That's awesome. That's cool. We're really excited. So

for full disclosure, you were recommended by Margaret Wilson, who totally, you know,

her interview at this point will have been a few episodes before and she totally gets what we're

doing and I asked her for some advice on people that I should interview. And your name came up

and I thought, wow, that's really a cool idea. And I am an honorary DO, which is not something

they give out very easy. I only know of like four. So you're a DO. You are a DO. So I am an

honorary DO, meaning that I have contributed enough to the profession that an institution,

a German institution, a 350-year-old institution of medicine and health went through all the

process to give me a degree as an honorary DO. And I do know a few tricks, but I'll use some of my

children. That's cool. That's really cool. That's really cool. Yeah. So, you know, even if you were

not, if you did not have a DO behind your name, we've made a couple of exceptions and you're

certainly, we're happy to have you. You're certainly one of the exceptions we're happy to make. So

I'm going to start the interview, Jason, the same way I start the physician interviews, which is,

and I'm going to ask you a little bit about, about to explain your job. Just start by telling us what

you do, what your normal day looks like when you wake up and what you do during a normal day,

maybe even what you did today. Well, and that's the fun thing about the museum profession,

particularly in osteopathic healthcare, is that every day you never know what's going to show up

in the mail because we are the only university that has a museum of osteopathy in the world.

So when you go online, if you found something, it brings you to us and we have our website,

the museum of osteopathic medicine, we have our Facebook, our social media. And so today I actually

talked for the first time to one of the Still descendants. This would be Andrew Taylor Still's

sister's kids. So a granddaughter who has pictures and stories and artifacts. And so we were just

chatting. She's in Greeley, Colorado, and she learned a lot that she didn't know. And she's

sending us family stuff. She goes, I don't know how to use the internet. I'm just going to send

it to you. That's so cool. That's so cool. So on a normal day, do you give tours? Do you, again,

are you opening mail? Obviously there's stuff coming in, but what else are you doing during the day?

What do you mean? What does your job entail? Well, and even during COVID, the university

kind of is very careful about people coming and going with our student population. We are giving

history and tours around the school and around the community. There's a lot of things. And the

students are really enjoying that interaction because they feel themselves somewhat isolated.

And students that have even been here for a few years are ambassadors. They've never been

to some of these places or heard the stories. And so we're very active. I'll be giving a lecture

tomorrow to Mexico City, to the OSMAS. So it's not just the United States, but it's the world.

Since March, I've given about 80 lectures, France, London, Maine, Missouri, all over ACOM, AOA.

So what we have to talk about, the philosophy of health that Dr. Still has, like breaking it down

to the way that Dr. Still would do it, body, mind, spirit, how do you come up with these ideas?

How do they apply today? His inclusiveness, his gender equity, his diversity, these are things

that were just his foundation, and they serve us well today.

Great. It's so great. And you're so passionate about it. I love it. You know, it's funny,

we did an episode that's coming out in the next few weeks, and it was actually our first

physician who specializes in neuromuscular medicine. And in the introduction, as I was talking to the

student that did the interview on the introduction, most of our episodes have shown how DOs are

special, but I think this episode presents, and what you represent, and what, again, a physician

that practices specifically neuromuscular medicine, or OMM, or osteopathic manipulative medicine,

is what makes us unique. So there's two parts of the podcast, what makes a DO special, and then

there's these special episodes that really show what make us unique.

And I think that's what's great about osteopathic health care, because again, though we do the

OMM, it's the philosophy of the whole person, and bringing them towards health. And as Dr.

Still says, we can't fix everything, but we can make every person a little bit better. And most

people are waiting for that. I mean, they bring in patients with cerebral palsy, he goes, and this

is really sad. But I tell you, we can give this person better quality of life, and that's what

we're going to do. And so this has always been the philosophy of how do we make sure that we

move our patients closer to the best person they can be. And we find in this time of this epidemic

that the healthier you are, the better you have. And that's what Dr. Still says, your best fight

against disease is health. And if we can get you, get those 10 pounds off, teach you how to have

better mental health, how to exercise, that you become the best person you can be, that's what

we can do that's best for you. And so it's a great philosophy about health. And you've got to be

mentally healthy, as well as physically healthy, the two work in conjunction. Yeah, I don't think

any physician would ever argue with any of those tenants. Jason, let me let me start by asking you

or let's let's talk a little bit about how the heck did you get here? Like, how did you end up

and I apologize, the name of the museum? Can you just tell us the Museum of Osteopathic Medicine,

Mom? The Museum of Osteopathic Medicine, and you were the director, you're the you're the big Kahuna.

And you know, I I'll tell you, I don't know if this is a good analogy or a silly analogy. But

I was watching I was thinking about the fact that I was going to meet with you, I was watching Dr.

Strange, which is like a Marvel movie. And there's a guy, there's a character in Dr. Strange in the

movie. His name is Wong. And he's like the the keeper of the library, right? He's like the keeper

of the secrets. And I feel like that's you like, you're like the Wong of osteopathy, right? You

keep the museum and the secrets. So tell us, how did you get here? Like, how did you end up in this

position? Right? How am I here 20 years later, and probably what people consider the best authority,

you know, when you can visit with a family member who calls you, and you know more about their

family than they do, you've done your job. But the thing about it is, is it was never my real plan

to go into osteopathy. I mean, I have a background in commercial art, I have a counseling degree,

which really helps in the mind spirit aspect. So I really get what Dr. Stills talking because I'm

trained in that area of health. And I've got my humanities degree, I worked in getting my master's

in education, and started my doctorate in health education. But what happened is after years of

administration at a nice liberal arts university, it's kind of like, is this it? That was here in

Kirksville, I actually came for a job, got my counseling degree, and then worked on my master's

in education at Truman University, the neighboring university. And I was in charge of all the students

that lived on campus. Anything that wasn't done in the classroom was my responsibility. And I did

that for 10 years. Right. So you're in Kirksville. So you're in Kirksville. So this is kind of like,

you're headed towards a meeting with osteopathy. Yeah, it was kind of by accident, because actually

just so happens, the university is again, a sister university. But I came here for that education,

and that job, and found out about osteopathy. And when this family is my wife, as I've used it,

my kids were born, you know, with basically obstetrician, osteopath. And when my kids were

injured, and my mother and father-in-law, we have all and what keeps osteopathy going is the patients,

because you really do feel that you're looked at, and not the symptoms, but what will make you

healthier. And so by joining on to help the museum, then it was just a bunch of spouses,

grabbing and collecting and making a mess of everything. So I mean, at least they got it,

but they're just like filling the attic, and they're not doing anything with it.

Right. So Jason, just to share with you my experience, you know, I interviewed at Kirksville

about 20 years ago. And, you know, I was telling Margaret Wilson, you know, again, TMI, but you

know, I had a girlfriend in New York at the time, and I ended up, you know, choosing my school

partially because of that. But yeah, I loved Kirksville. It was an amazing experience. And

I remember specifically, there was not a museum there, really. There was, you know, I remember

going, there were a couple of houses, right? There was like the school. We're going to talk a little

bit about what's there. But there were some artifacts. I remember touching AT Stills staff

and seeing the school, the original school. So tell me, did you apply for this job? Did someone

call you and say, listen, we need somebody to do this? And then how did it grow?

Well, and that's the thing. The museum started in 1934 by the daughter Blanche, you know,

love father, and AT Stills was amazing. So she set up two little cabinets, little curios of,

of, you know, familiar possessions, his boots and a couple papers and, you know, something.

And that was it. And from that little start, we've grown to 100,000 artifacts from around the world,

the collections of all the great osteopaths that have ever, whether it be cranial in Sutherland

or core, and working with basically the parasympathetics. And so everything,

people Freiman and crane, you know, everything has come to us. And so when I came here, it really

was kind of like a mess. And we started hiring professional museum people, we started moving

toward what we call accreditation, the highest standards. And so we started that in 1997 with

an evaluation. And they basically said, Yeah, start over. So we did. And in 2011, we have what

we called a revisit of our thing. What have you done in 13 years? Like, my gosh, this isn't even

the same institution. It's like, yeah, we've been working towards this. And today, we are now putting

in for the highest standards of museum. These are things that you would look for the Chicago Art

Institute, or the great St. Louis Botanical Gardens or things, we are at that level to apply

for accreditation. And so that is actually another thing I was working on today, was working with a

sister museum to get a letter of recommendation. So we can start this process that we've been on

this journey. But again, we started off with just a couple cabinets. And we are a collection that's

used for research, genealogy, the COVID epidemic, we've gone back to 1918. And a lot of the things

that they they're using now, the prone position and things to open up the lungs, these are

osteopathic kind of things that were done 100 years ago, the last time we had this round, the

way that we treat people. And so I've that's why I've been giving a lot of lectures about what did

we do that, you know, a lot of the things we're doing now, social, they were doing this, and we

had all the materials and images. And so, again, every day, something new comes in. And, and we

have moved to the level that I have an assistant director that worked at the state with 81 different

sites. And now she just has one. And she does it great, our registrar, you know, trained professional,

our research person, our person who does the exhibits. So I have to say, the school is

consistently at Still University, which began as the American School of osteopathy has put the money

into saving our if if you're an osteopath, you can come back to the one person, and everything comes

your pedigree, your pedigree, you can trace back to Dr. Still in some way, because it begins with

one person, it's kind of like Christianity, there's Jesus, and then there's everything after that.

But there's in Christianity, not a lot before that. Well, in osteopathy, 80 still started

something. And obviously, it works because 25% of all family physicians are DOS and 58 schools

from one man. Today, it's crazy. But it's the patient, it's it's what people feel they get.

It's the way they like this kind of treatment. And we like to serve the rural underserved family

physician, but we're surgeons, and we're psychiatrists, and we're all the other things.

But we do family medicine really, really good. It's amazing, Jason, I want to hear about you

and the museum. But I think that if I was a say, pre medical student, and I was thinking about

osteopathic medicine, and I started listening, would I be able to kind of understand and comprehend

and follow the discussion. So it may be best if I asked you just to give us a little brief story

about at still maybe in like a two minute fast forward, this is his life. And in a few minutes,

just on his philosophy, before we start talking about the museum. Okay. So yeah. So if we were

to kind of look at Dr. Still, this is a man who never wanted to be a doctor. He wanted to be a

farmer, marry his local gal, and have a family and just have a nice little simple life. But a

hailstorm destroyed his crops, and he couldn't replant. So he and his wife decided to teach,

no money and education. So he looks to his father and his older brothers who are physicians and

says, maybe that would be a path at least for security. So he goes into medicine, because he

thinks it's a way to survive and make a living. But when he sees the blistering, the poisoning,

the dosing, the medicine, he says, this doesn't work. And it's like, but you make money, he goes,

but it doesn't work. I can't do this. And this was medicine. Most of the people went to doctors,

half of them died. So much that Thomas Jefferson said they shouldn't even be licensed. Because,

you know, and we're the frontier, it's a it's a life and death situation. So you just get what

you can get. But Dr. Still, when finally his wife dies after birth, and the child dies, and then

all of his children from his first marriage die, he remarries, loses two more children, he says,

this is it. We've got to have something better. Not only did they die, they were tortured.

And I want to find something that works. And so he moved towards the foundation of health,

diet, exercise, mental health, and this thing called manipulation, that in many ways,

it's a little tweak. It's like your car needs tweaks, machinery needs tweaks.

Our bodies get kind of roughed up, exercising, sleeping, doing what we do. We need to tweak so

health flows in naturally and waste flows out. It's a very simple thing. But you clog up the

sewer system, and the city's going to go wrong. And that's what our bodies are like, Dr. Still

would say. So he moves this ideas, no medicine, which was arsenic, mercury, cyanide, opium,

no, those are the drugs, no drugs till we know better. You would be amazed with the

drugs we have today, but they didn't have those. Let's work on what brings health.

And so Dr. Still started this, and then the school grew based on what we knew.

And in 1909, they looked at 166 medical institutions and said 100 of them are crap,

and closed them. Two thirds of medical education closed. That's how bad it was in the United

States. But the eight osteopathic schools founded on a European model of research and health

survived in 66 MD schools. But being such a small percentage, it was hard for us to really

share our story. And we just hung in there. And again, as I said, what we were able to do is

they got it so much medicine, there was nobody in the Midwest. And that's where our schools were in

Kansas, in Des Moines, in Chicago, in Kirksville. And so they needed us to provide the service

for these rural populations. And it somewhat became our mission of the rural underserved family

doctor, which we still hold to as one of our areas. But we've expanded throughout the United

States, almost in every state. There's one or two of our medical institutions. And so I hope that

gives the story of what we do is we base our medicine on evidence, what works, research,

and proof. And with what we always have known as the foundation of health.

Yeah, I think that's that is the best two minute explanation. That is perfect. And again, you know,

I think the whole point or the whole idea behind your interview and what makes it so important

is these are the things that make DOs unique. So, again, as you said, I'm a gastroenterologist.

My postgraduate training was mostly allopathic, you know, it was really all in MD institutions,

because that's where I felt that I could get the most training. But my foundation is all from

osteopathic school with these concepts. And again, it's what I believe. And I think that you'd be

you'd be hard pressed to find any physician that would disagree with any of the basic concepts that

you're presenting. And this is what I often hear. It's like, okay, wait a minute, my DO,

which would be you wouldn't do OMM on me, you wouldn't do manipulation. But the feeling is

understanding it and knowing it, to some degree, makes you, I think, in some ways, a better

understanding doctor. And therefore, because you understand you can make a reference, but a surgeon

can do ribless because the sooner the body starts to feel normal and goes out of its hibernation

from the shock of surgery, the quicker you start to heal and the quicker you get out. So there are

little things we've learned, and such as the prone position to keep people off ventilators. These are

things that are very natural to the osteopath of working with the body, the way understanding how

to give more capacity, how to take pressure off, how to get the body healing faster, how to get the

lymphatics producing the white blood cells. So again, doctors still knew all of these things and

and past somebody also said, we're progressive, we will always get better. And so we use cadavers,

we use digital anatomy, you never have enough anatomy, we use ultrasound, one of the first

schools to start teaching students to look at the live body, because the body changes in depth,

the doctor still said us, it's good, but it's not the same. And so he pushed us to go forward,

he goes, I'm not the end of it, I'm the start, and every person will make it better.

Right, Jason, just explain again, a little more for the medical students,

you've referenced a few times prone positioning. So for those of you who aren't medically trained

and don't understand that term, during the pandemic, and this has been used in prior disease

states, but patients on a ventilator, usually classically are laying on their back. And

specifically during the pandemic, one of the techniques that was used was changing the

position of a ventilated patient from laying on their back to basically laying on their stomach.

And it was found that those patients had better oxygenation and better outcomes, which which

we've shown in the past. And I think Jason, your point is that that's an example of a very simple

physical change in the patient, again, turning them from their back to their stomach, which

made a huge difference. And that could be extrapolated into some of the things that

the osteopaths think about on a daily basis. And it's a very simple thing, but it's

understanding the anatomy and thinking about what is my patient needing? What is the problem?

You know, not the symptom, but what is the problem? And with these kinds of things, flipping them

basically to their stomach opens up the air capacity, lets the fluid drains, but

kicks the pressure off. And actually, it'll keep them from going into a ventilator, which is

a more dangerous state for patients once you've reached that need. So if we can keep them out of

the ventilator, their survival rate goes up substantially, and their healing rate, because

that's a very intrusive machine, life saving, but also hard on the body. And so again, understanding

these simple things, you know, and so it's again, it's it's treating people at the lowest level,

but not dispelling that sometimes you need the drugs, sometimes you need the surgery,

but do those as the last resort, not as the first resort.

Right. And again, my last comment, going back to the the prone positioning, as you stated,

is, you know, no MD or physician taking care of COVID patients during the, you know, the peak

of the pandemic would have given any second thought to the fact that we needed to turn

the patients on their stomach and give them steroids. However, sometimes, I guess, standard

physicians or allopathic physicians or, you know, physicians that are practicing standard medicine

now might not have a problem with the drugs, but may have a little question about manual therapy.

And again, I think that that's a lot of obtuse. Same with the fever. Dr. Stewart was always like,

the fever is not, it's not disease, it's healing. And yet there's this attitude, oh my gosh, I got

a fever, I got to get rid of it. It's like, no, no, no, no, you kind of need the fever. And people

are like, what? It's like, no, the fever is fighting infection. It isn't, you know, it shouldn't get

out of control, but it also isn't a bad thing. And learning these basic things, you know, and

not treating the symptoms. Right, Jason. And again, just to define for the students,

you know, we definitely have a philosophy in current medicine that, you know, we always give

Tylenol and things like this to bring fever down. But the general idea is from a scientific

perspective is that the body raises the temperature for a reason. And there is some theory that maybe

viral proteins don't function as well at a higher temperature. And that's why the body is actually

increasing the temperature to help fight the virus by not allowing it to do its function in the manner

that it would be most beneficial to the virus, obviously. Jason, we're going to shift gears a

little bit and maybe, you know, I hate to use the term virtual tour, but obviously we're not going

to show everyone the museum, but would you go maybe section by section through what the museum

has? And, you know, if I was coming today, let's say, which obviously travel would be a little

restrictive, but let's say, right, take us on a little virtual tour of the museum. Can you do that

for us? Yeah. And I think what's kind of fun is as you would enter a glass atrium, you would actually

see the humble log cabin family home of Dr. Still. So you see that he came from a simple upbringing,

but it was being in nature that made him observe how things work. And for that reason, that's why

we were always on a foundation of what's going on and what are you observing. And so Dr. Still

grew up in an environment of dissecting the animals that he killed for his meal. He learned

more about anatomy before he was ever at the medical school, just through living in the wild.

So that was a good thing. You next see this simple little schoolhouse because Dr. Still wasn't sure

he wanted to teach this. He wasn't sure he could teach it. He could do it. But by having faculty

that had an understanding how to build this little school where he accepted women, this was

unheard of in 1892. Women were not to take the highest job, which was medical profession, but

Dr. Still was home with his mother while father was preaching and doctoring. She was doing all

the work and did it better than dad. So of course he accepted women. And when women could have women

physicians, because the first instinct was just to give women hysterectomies. And so women wouldn't

go to doctors. That was standard procedure. Once women had, not saying all the, but once women had

women physicians who understood better how to function, women wanted women doctors, but they

take men doctors too. But what I'm saying is it changed medicine in many ways by having women involved

and doing a great job. So this little humble schoolhouse grew within a few years to 600 and

then to nine schools and now to the numbers. So again, you come in and you see the schoolhouse,

you see the log cabin, you come into the museum, you see a dissected nervous system. This has only

been done four times and our school did it twice. The other ones at the Smithsonian and there's one

in Bangkok and one in Pennsylvania, but it shows the importance of understanding the anatomy.

If you're going to work on the body, understand it and you can never have enough. You can actually

then see how OMM, manipulative medicine works, the techniques, the tools from Dr. Still's times to

now, and things that are used. You see research that we had one of the first x-ray machines to

prove that when you do manipulation, you're actually doing something. And all the research

that went into when your body is not in alignment, all kinds of things start to go wrong. Your sweat

patterns, your pain patterns, all kinds of healing is interrupted. And so we then see the story of

Dr. Still in another area and then a whole section of just his lifestyle as far as what his home was

because his home was open and he treated the presidents, anybody that was the significant

people, Mark Twain, people that you would know, Buffalo Bill, the people that were the people,

the musicians, the artists, the politicians, all came to Kirksville to be treated because they

wanted good care and that's what they got. That's great. Yes. So, okay, so you have the house

and the school and then, you know, I was looking on the website because again, I'm a little embarrassed

but I have not been back to Kirksville since that interview. But yet you also have a room with

pictures and documents and those type of things as well. We have a whole research center, a library

dedicated to what do you want to know? Do you want to just know family stuff? Do you want to know

one specific area of medicine? How have we worked with this through the time? And that's the idea.

You know, what's funny is orthotics. It sounds kind of funny that everybody has heard, I think,

of Dr. Scholz. You know, basically they're orthotics. You put them in your shoes. People

don't realize that Dr. Steele pioneered the concept of orthotics. He had a problem, a fever

that went on for eight months and had a little balance issue. So in his boots, he stuck leather

extra boots to push his feet towards the center. And he must have taught this because the original

foot ease of Dr. Scholz had within the label osteopathic. So people don't even realize something

as common as that has basically a foundation in osteopathic health care. And Dr. Steele pioneered

this. He just did it because he needed better balance. And that's what the walking stick

and the boots were all about. It was just his treatment for standing upright. And on the left

side, the indentions are tight in his orthotic and the right foot's a little schmoozy. And that's

where the walking stick was. So we can actually see his own health care needs because he's just

a person. So Jason, what else? Just give us a little more on what is in the museum. Can you

just tell me about some of the other parts of the museum? And so we also have a medicinal garden

because again, at one time, each family was responsible for their health care and everybody

had their own little home remedies. And there's a lot of validity to some of these home remedies

because they've been used for 300 years. I mean, we came up with aspirin by looking at the Native

Americans. When the women would go into labor, they would go peel off the bark of the willow tree

and the women would chew on it, the basis of aspirin. And so there is some healing things.

And so we have a whole medicinal garden and a story of using these with all the plants that

you would find in the Midwest. So the things that you're going to find when you walk down

through the woods are all in our garden and explaining how they were used by both American

Indians and by the local settlers as health care. And some of these, we have Dr. Still's cemetery

site, we have the downtown area, which has not changed. And so we talked about early medicine.

So we do tours throughout the city that hasn't changed. And Dr. Still's statue that he lived to

see and how the town worked as a medical community is all part of the tour.

Jason, can I ask you, do you know or can you think of any special guests over the years,

people that have visited that really stand out that you were either surprised that came or excited

that came? Well, we, I mean, what you might not expect is again, if you look on the map of where

Kirk's from, it is one of the hardest places I think in the United States to get to. And we daily

and weekly have guests from Russia, Germany, even during the COVID when they can get here or are

here. This weekend, we will have a German osteopath and an American osteopath that have married and

they practice up in Massachusetts. They're coming through and we'll do a kind of mixed tour and

work with that. Everett Koop, a health surgeon of the United States was here. People come every day

from all over the world to our museum. We serve about 8,000 visitors, which might not seem like

a crazy number, but then we see basically 40, 50,000 in other terms through websites and lectures

and things like that, just on an annual basis. So if someone wanted to come for a tour, we're

just, we're going to wrap things up. Jason, thank you so much for your time. This has been great.

Can you tell me, let's say some, a student was listening and they said, you know, I really would

love to, you know, assuming everything opens up soon and, you know, we're hoping for that,

would they email, would they call the school? How would they go about setting up a tour?

And that's the idea. We, we're giving tours right now of the students to just kind of get them out

and about and using safe distancing and all. But the thing is you could just call the museum.

We're the only museum of, if you look at museum and osteopathy, you'll get us on the website. You

can actually virtually visit our museum. If you YouTube, just go 360, ATSU, and you can actually

on your own look around, hear our story, see everything from your own, from your own phone

if you want. And so again, let us know. We're happy to have guests and show you and give you

the stories. And we're very proud of our rich heritage, heritage of frontier America. I should

say it could have only happened in the United States for one reason. In Italy, they set up the

churches, the schools in Bologna a thousand years ago, and the Magna Carta created the politicians

of England. So there was nothing, no new idea could have crept in. And in America, it was life

and death and we could do whatever. And by time we got the standards of the Flexner report in 1910

for quality, we had created ourselves. And then we transferred over to Europe as standard medicine.

So it's an American story that couldn't have happened anywhere but on the frontier.

That's a great way to wrap up. Listen, thank you so much, Jason. We really appreciate your time

and it was great talking to you.

Ian, thanks for having me and come to Kirksville. We'll give you this tour of our story.

This concludes our episode of Do or Do Not. Send all inquiries, comments, suggestions,

and even let us know if there's someone you want us to interview to do or do not podcast

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interviews lined up and we're excited to share them with you. This is Tianyu Shea. Thank you

guys so much for listening to Do or Do Not.