Observations on the mechanical treatment of disease of the hip-joint / by Charles Fayette Taylor.

  • Taylor, Charles Fayette, 1827-1899.
Date:
[1879]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the mechanical treatment of disease of the hip-joint / by Charles Fayette Taylor. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    /y. ’ OBSERVATIONS ON THE MECHANICAL TREATMENT OF DISEASE OF THE HIP-JOINT. BY CHARLES FAYETTE TAYLOR, 51. D. In my intercourse with medical men I am so impressed with the amount of misconception of the means used and the paramount object aimed at by the advocates of mechanical treatment for disease of the hip-joint, tliat I desire briefly to set forth my own views in regard to some of the ideas and the moi'e important methods which considerable experience lias seemed to establish as controlling in such cases. The subject may be introduced in the form of the following proposi- tions, namely : First. All m-gans while in a state of disease require rest from the performance of their functions in the direct ratio of the amount, quality, and intensity of the abnormal movements. Second. What is rest for an organ in one condition is not necessarily rest for it in another condition ; that is to say, an organ, in a certain degree of jurogressive in- flammation, presents conditions essentially different from the same organ in the same relative degree of inflammation in the retrogressive stage. The so-called “ mechanical” treatment of hip-joint disease, so far as I understand it, is simply the working out to practical conclusions of re- sponses to indications to which the above propositions give the key- notes. The difficulty with the non-specialist in these cases is that he is apt to give altogether too much importance to appliances and too little to the varying states of the disease. While he is contemplating differ- ent kinds of “splints” the disease is carrying off his patient. If he 5vould seek only for the exact indications, the best means for responding to them would be likely to suggest themselves, and he would be sur- prised to find how simple and easy it would be to effect his object. The mechanical treatment of hip-joint disease is not a question of sj)lints, — nearly everything can be accomplished by cheap and home-made appli- ances, once the condition is clear in the mind, — but one of diffei-ent conceptions of symptoms. The particular means of answering the indi- cations must follow the conception. They do not, or at least they ought not, to precede it. Now, heeding the logic of hip disease, we attempt first to ascertain