CASE I. A carpenter falling under the ruins of his scaffold, was immediately taken up and carried home, where a surgeon discovered an oblique fracture of the os femoris, but without any displacement. The thigh, which appeared even a little longer than the other, was fixed in an apparatus too slack to prevent muscular action. Next day, the length of the thigh was the same, but the whole extremity was in a paralytic state, accompanied by an entire inability to discharge urine. The moxa was proposed. The patient being placed in the position directed by Pott, for fractures of the os femoris, the fire was applied; some movements were the consequence; the application being repeated on the sixth day, the muscles instantly recovered their power of action, and then the shortening of the limb became evident, and still returning immediately after being removed by extension, rendered it necessary to have recourse to an apparatus calculated for permanent extension. 12. In this case, the muscular influence is evident. Indeed the shock having produced a temporary suspension of the excitability of the part, the fragments remained in place and in proper contact with each other: but the moxa having awakened the excitability again in the muscles of the thigh, they resumed their action and caused, as usual, the inferior fragment to mount on the superior. 13. Hence it follows, 1st, that it is principally to the action of the muscles that we must attribute the displacement, in the longitudinal direction of the bone; 2dly, that, as that action, being the effect of an inherent power, is constantly exerted, the limb must have a constant tendency to this displacement, particularly in oblique fractures, where the two extremities of the bone represent two inclined plains, which readily glide along each other. 14. To this must be still added another cause, which operates injuriously in the course of the treatment. However solid the bed may be on which the patient lies, the nates or buttocks, being the most projecting part of the body, soon form a depression in it; hence arises an inclination or descent of the plain or surface on which the body lies. The body therefore sliding downwards, pushes before it the superior fragment, and makes it overlap the inferior one. In consequence of this, the muscles, being irritated by the points of the bones, increase the force of their contractions, and, as we have already observed (10), draw the inferior fragment upwards. This double movement of the two ends of the bone in contrary directions, produces only a single effect, namely, the overlapping of these ends, but carries this overlapping to a higher degree.