author
Carl Philip McConnell
1874–1939
A leading early osteopath, he wrote influential textbooks that helped shape how osteopathic medicine was taught and explained in the early 1900s. His work tried to connect Andrew Taylor Still’s osteopathic ideas with broader medical thinking of the time.
1 Audiobook
The practice of osteopathy
by Carl Philip McConnell, Charles Clayton Teall
About the author
Born in 1874, Carl Philip McConnell became one of the notable physician-writers of early osteopathy. He graduated from the American School of Osteopathy in 1896 and joined the faculty the next year. Sources from osteopathic institutions also note that he later earned an M.D. from a homeopathic medical school, reflecting the broad medical interests that shaped his career.
McConnell is best remembered for books such as The Practice of Osteopathy, written with Charles Clayton Teall, and Clinical Osteopathy. His writing aimed to make osteopathic theory and treatment more systematic for students and practitioners, and later commentators have described him as an important interpreter of A. T. Still’s teachings. In 1904, he was elected president of the American Osteopathic Association.
He also practiced in Chicago with his wife, Agnes Russell Darling, according to an osteopathic yearbook summary quoted by A.T. Still University. Today, McConnell is still read mainly for his role in the formative years of osteopathic medicine and for the way his books tried to place osteopathy in conversation with mainstream medical thought.