Great care in the after-treatment is required to prevent undue shortening of the limb, or in the event of a cure to secure the most favourable position for the anchylosis. The femur occasionally tends to protrude at the wound, and hence may require to be counter-extended by splints. If required at all, the splint should be made with an iron elbow opposite the wound to admit of its being easily dressed. In most cases counter-extension may be best managed by a weight and pulley. Various forms of hammock swings to support the whole body, and slings of leather or canvas to support the limb only, have been found to aid recovery, and render the patient much more comfortable. When the acetabulum is also diseased the prognosis is much more unfavourable than when it is sound. The experiments of Heine and Jäger on the dead body, and operations by Hancock, Erichsen, and Holmes, on patients, have shown that in cases of extensive disease of the acetabulum it is quite possible by a prolonged and careful dissection to remove it all without injury of the pelvic viscera. The details of incisions for such an operation need scarcely be given, as they must vary in each case with the amount of bone diseased, and the position of the already existing sinuses. The amount of bone that _may_ be removed varies much. Erichsen in one case excised "the upper end of the femur, the acetabulum, the rami of the pubis, and of the ischium, a portion of the tuber ischii, and part of the dorsum ilii."[61] A less formidable proceeding may be useful in cases where the acetabulum is diseased, but not deeply. The moderate use of an ordinary gouge may succeed in removing the diseased bone. Experience and the cold evidence of statistics prove, however, that the prognosis in any case is modified very much for the worse by the presence of any disease of the acetabulum, more than one-half of the cases proving fatal in which it is diseased, whether attempts to remove the disease of the acetabulum be made or not, and that those cases do best in which the head of the femur has been displaced, and lies outside the joint almost like a loose sequestrum among the soft parts. The results of excision of the hip have as yet been very discouraging, the mortality of the whole series of published cases being, according to Dr. Hodge's careful table, very little under 1 in every 2 cases, viz., 1 in 2-5/53. Later statistics are however more favourable. Like all other excisions, the mortality increases very much with the patient's age. Thus of 103 completed cases in which the age is given, 53 recovered and 50 died, but dividing the cases at the end of the sixteenth year, we find that of the children below this age 43 recovered and 29 died, a mortality of 40.2 per cent.; of the adults, 10 recovered, and 21 died, or a mortality of 67.6 per cent.