William Garner Sutherland came to study the osteopathy of Dr. Andrew Taylor Still in 1898 and found within that study a lifetime's work. This volume of his collected writings, Contributions of Thought, represents that work, which Adah Sutherland described in the preface to the first edition as depicting the progress of an "original thinker."
“Have you ever had a thought strike you? I have told many times of the thought that struck me before I graduated from the American School of Osteopathy. [In trying] to prove that motion between cranial bones in the living adult is impossible....I gained knowledge not only of the articular mobility of the skull but also of the Tide and something within that I call the "Breath of Life." I do not consider this contribution of thought mine--I call it a guiding thought.”
“The goal with your patients is to find the way to healthy function within the mechanism that they bring to you. Study the Life principle and come closer to understanding what I mean by the “Breath of Life.” To the digger who will take time to dream and the dreamer who will wake up and dig, the science of osteopathy will unfold into a magnitude equal to that of the heavens.”
—William Garner Sutherland, DO