I am presenting this subject because I never have seen published any report that embodied the same principles or the same technique or the same results that I have obtained. The method is to be recommended because it shortens the period of confinement and disability at least 50 per cent. It relieves the patients of the heavy burdens with which they are encumbered when the external methods of immobilization are relied upon. Their position while in bed can be altered at will and proper hygiene is much more easily and safely accomplished. The local circulation and nutrition in the leg is so little interfered with that upon recovery the patient can almost at once resume the muscular control of his injured limb. There need be no fear of shortening by overlapping. The danger of infection can be dismissed as a serious obstacle because the commonly accepted standards of modern asepsis render infection a remote possibility and should it occur the process of bony union is not gravely interfered with. The non-touch technique is not considered essential and was not used in our work.

An analysis of my cases shows a total of 33 in which there was no mortality attributable to the operation. There were 4 cases of suppuration, all of which are explained, and all finally obtained complete union. There was one compound fracture which had existed three months before operation in which prompt union occurred and a useful leg was obtained. There were three gunshot fractures, all of which united promptly. Two cases previously had been operated upon. Other methods had been tried and failed in 15 cases of non-union. The period of non-union ranged from four weeks to three years and ten months. There were 3 cases of accidental complications, one due to faulty technique, one to an uncontrollable patient and one to the traumatic hazard of football. A case of only four weeks' duration was classed as non-union because at the end of that time there was overlapping and suppurative necrosis of the fragments and no evidence of callus formation.