_Observation._ When a bone is fractured, a surgeon is immediately called, and the bone is "set." While the limb remains swelled and painful, the surgeon is required to attend and keep the dressings (bandages and splints) on. When the swelling has abated, and the pain subsided, frequently the patient intimates to the surgeon that his services can be dispensed with, as the "limb is doing well." This is the most important period, as the bone is uniting, and, unless the ends are nicely adjusted, the dressing properly applied, the person will find, on recovery, a shortened and crooked limb. The surgeon is then censured, when he is not blamable. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What is one cause of rickets? What are the prevention and remedies for this disease? 145. Does the time vary when the reuniting substance of the bone is secreted from the blood? When is the surgeon's care most needed? Why? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 146. It is seldom that a bone is displaced without injury to the connecting ligaments and membranes. When these connecting bands are lacerated, pain, swelling, and other symptoms indicating inflammation succeed, which should be removed by proper treatment, directed by a surgical adviser. 147. In sprains, but few, if any, of the fibres of the connecting ligaments are lacerated; but they are unduly strained and twisted, which occasions acute pain at the time of the injury. This is followed by inflammation and weakness of the joints. The treatment of these injuries is similar to that of a dislocated bone after its reduction. The most important item in the treatment during the few first days, is rest. 148. In persons of scrofulous constitutions, and those in whom the system is enfeebled by disease, white swellings and other chronic diseases of the joints frequently succeed sprains. Such persons cannot be too assiduous in adopting a proper and early treatment of injured joints. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 146. What parts are injured in the displacement of a bone? 147. What causes the acute pain in sprains? What is a good remedy for this kind of injury? 148. What caution to persons of scrofulous constitutions? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= CHAPTER VIII THE MUSCLES. 149. All the great motions of the body are caused by the movement of some of the bones which form the framework of the system; but these, independently of themselves, have not the power of motion, and only change their position through the action of other organs attached to them, which, by contracting, draw the bones after them. In some of the slight movements, as the winking of the eye, no bones are displaced. These moving, contracting organs are the _Mus´cles_, (lean meat.) ANATOMY OF THE MUSCLES.