52. We must not, however, by throwing the fore-arm into the greatest possible degree of extension, allow it to be drawn into the opposite extreme. From this error the same inconveniencies would result. In such a case, should the fragments touch each other, and press too hard at their posterior edges, they must inevitably leave an intervening vacuity or space between their anterior edges. Hence a greater thickness of callus on the one side than on the other, and consequently an impediment more or less troublesome in the motions of the joint. If the inferior fragment do not touch the superior one, it sinks into the olecranon cavity, leaves the other behind it, and hence another source of irregularity in the consolidation. 53. Between these two extremes (50 and 51), it remains to choose a middle course, and that position will be best, in which the fore-arm shall be, so to speak, in a state between semi-flexion and extension. By this the fragments, being brought into perfect contact, will experience no obstacle to a reunion, which will be therefore both speedy and uniform. 54. But it would be useless to place the limb in a proper position, if no means were made use of to retain it there. Being immediately submitted to the action and influence of a multitude of causes, it will lose its position, and the work of nature being interrupted, the consolidation will be retarded. Hence appears, both the necessity of placing a solid body, as Desault did, before the whole of the limb, to prevent its flexion, and the insufficiency of the apparatus proposed by Duverney and others, who directed to lay a thick compress on the fracture, to surround the elbow then by a circular one, to secure the whole by a kind of figure of 8 bandage, similar to that used in blood-letting, and, finally, to place the limb on a pillow, without further precaution. 55. Position alone evidently acts only on the lower fragment, which it directs towards the upper one. But it is also necessary to draw the upper fragment towards the lower one, and fix it there, and this is certainly the most difficult point; because, the triceps muscle having a constant tendency to contract, opposes its action to the approximation of the fragments, and indeed prevents it, if, as in the means usually proposed and adopted, the pieces of the bandage glide easily over each other. 56. These considerations determined Desault to search for some means which, being more efficacious than those already in use, might better fulfil the indications of the fracture. He accordingly invented the apparatus which we are about to describe; some ideas of this apparatus are indeed borrowed from other bandages. The success which attended the use of it at the Hotel-Dieu, will, without doubt, introduce it generally into rational practice, where the insufficiency of the old forms of apparatus is acknowledged.