Museum of Osteopathic Medicine in Kirksville: A Visitor’s Guide

The Museum of Osteopathic Medicine at A.T. Still University is one of Kirksville's most concentrated collections of local and medical history.

ATSU says the museum holds more than 100,000 objects, photographs, documents and books, with material dating from the early 1800s to the present and a major concentration from 1870 to 1940.

The museum is at 800 W. Jefferson St. in Kirksville.

The core collection centers on A.T. Still

Andrew Taylor Still developed osteopathy and founded the American School of Osteopathy in Kirksville in 1892.

The museum's core holdings include objects from Still's professional and private life, many donated by his daughter Blanche Laughlin and other family members.

The museum itself traces its institutional history to 1934.

That gives it a dual role:

• preserving the origins of osteopathic medicine;
• preserving an important part of Kirksville's own history.

Heritage Hall contains entire historic structures

One of the museum's most unusual spaces is Heritage Hall.

Inside are two large historic artifacts:

• the Still Family Cabin, built in Virginia in the 1820s;
• the two-room first building used by the American School of Osteopathy from 1892 to 1894.

Both were moved to their current location in 1994.

They should not be confused with reconstructions or with structures that have always occupied the ATSU campus.

Other current exhibits broaden the story

ATSU currently identifies exhibits including:

Whole Person Healthcare: Osteopathy through the life of Andrew Still, an interactive treatment of Still and osteopathic ideas.

Treatments and Practices in 19th Century American Medicine, which places osteopathy against the medical practices and alternatives of the period in which it developed.

Outside Heritage Hall, the Historic Medicinal Plant Garden presents plants associated with early medical practice in a modern landscape.

The research collection is not the same thing as the public exhibits

The International Center for Osteopathic History is the museum's research side.

ATSU says its collections include many former holdings of the A.T. Still Memorial Library, for which the museum assumed responsibility in 1997.

That material is especially relevant to researchers looking for archival documents, books, photographs and institutional history rather than simply walking through the public exhibit areas.

Guided tours can be scheduled

ATSU invites visitors to call or email the museum to schedule a guided tour.

The museum currently lists:

• phone: 660-626-2359;
• email: museum@atsu.edu.

A guided tour is not the only reason to contact the museum before a visit.

ATSU currently contradicts itself about Saturday hours

The museum's official website is internally inconsistent.

Current ATSU pages checked in September 2026 display multiple Saturday instructions:

• some say 10 a.m.–3 p.m.;
• some say by appointment only;
• at least one exhibit index has displayed another Saturday closing time.

The weekday schedule of Monday through Friday, 8 a.m.–5 p.m. appears consistently.

For Saturday, call ahead.

This article also does not state that admission is free because a clear current admission policy was not found on the official pages checked.

A museum and a research institution

A casual visitor can see historic structures and interpretive exhibits.

A researcher can go much deeper into the documentary history of osteopathy.

That combination is what makes the museum unusual: it is simultaneously a Kirksville visitor attraction, an institutional archive and a repository for the physical history of the profession that began here.