Medicine: Rockefellers & Osteopathy

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A young woman who was both an enthusiastic tennis player and the outstanding U.S. interpreter of Chopin went to see Perrin Thacher Wilson, a Boston doctor of osteopathy. She had some bursitis in her shoulder. Possibly caused and aggravated by tennis, it interfered with her piano playing. Dr. Wilson gave her treatment that he calls "scientific adjustment," won her devotion as a steady patient.

Last week, after 27 years. Dr. Wilson's scientific adjustment paid off to the tune of $1,000,000 in Rockefeller money to promote the teaching and public understanding of osteopathy. The pianist-patient was California-born Martha Baird, then in her 30s. And Martha Baird, after the death of her second husband in 1950, became in 1951 the second wife of John Davison Rockefeller Jr. In nine years of marriage before his death this May, John D. Jr. also, at his wife's suggestion, enjoyed Dr. Wilson's ministrations.

Now, to honor Dr. Wilson, 71 and still practicing, the grateful Widow Rockefeller is giving $500,000 to the Kirksville (Mo.) College of Osteopathy and Surgery,* to be spent over ten years, to support a professorship and two fellowships in osteopathic theory and practice. In a separate but by no means coincidental move, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (representing Martha Rockefeller's stepchildren) gave $500,000 to be spread over three years and used mainly for strengthening the faculties of all six U.S. osteopathic schools. The purpose, as defined by Laurance Rockefeller: "To increase still further the substantial contribution the profession now makes to public health."

Spokesmen for both osteopathy and orthodox medicine hoped that by raising osteopathic teaching standards the grants might eventually promote the muchdiscussed, long-stalled rapprochement between the two healing arts.