Hippocrates, and every practitioner since his time, have replaced the fragments by what they call extension, counter-extension, and coaptation.[23] This threefold method, though sanctioned by long usage, and rendered almost venerable by age, is by no means necessary at all times in practice, as will presently be observed. Previously to having recourse to it, it is necessary to place the patient in a suitable position. But this position varies: most of the moderns adopt, after the example of the ancients, a horizontal position: so that the thigh may be extended on the body, and the leg on the thigh. This is the common practice at present in France. [23] A term of nearly the same import with “conformation.” TRANS. 23. Pott imagined, on the contrary, that if the lower extremity were kept in a half-bent position, the muscles, being more relaxed, would offer less resistance to the efforts of the extension: he, therefore, proposed to bend the leg on the thigh, and the thigh on the pelvis, and to lay the patient on his side, a position, which, when first employed in reduction, was to be continued throughout the treatment, during which it would render the causes of displacement less active (10 ... 15). Bell adopted this method, which indeed appears to be generally in use in England. 24. But the difficulty of making extension and counter-extension, with the limb thus situated, the necessity of making them on the fractured bone itself, and not on a part distant from the fracture, such as the lower part of the leg; the impossibility of comparing the diseased thigh with the sound one, to judge of the regularity of the conformation; the uneasiness occasioned by this position, if long continued, though it may at first appear the most natural; the troublesome and painful pressure of the body on the great trochanter of the affected side; the derangements to which the fragments are exposed when the patient goes to stool; the difficulty of fixing the leg with sufficient steadiness, to prevent it from affecting the os femoris by its motions; the evident impracticability of this method, when both thighs are broken; and, finally, experience, which, in France, has been by no means favourable to the position recommended by Pott: such were the considerations, which determined Desault to have recourse to it no more, after having tried it on two patients, in one of whom the limb was considerably shortened, notwithstanding the most scrupulous attentions.