91. From the foregoing considerations, it follows, that none of the signs of a fracture of the neck of the os femoris, is exclusively characteristic, that the whole of them, taken separately, would be insufficient, and that it is their assemblage alone which can throw on the diagnosis that light which is oftentimes wanting to it, even in the view of able practitioners. But after all, in the present case, as in every other one, should any doubt exist, it is right to take the safe side, and apply the apparatus, which is indeed useless but not dangerous if the disease does not exist, but indispensably necessary if it does. § XV. OF THE PROGNOSIS. 92. The existence of a fracture being ascertained, what prognosis is to be formed respecting it? In answer to this general question, it will be sufficient, I think, to resolve the following particular ones. What accidents accompany the fracture in the first instance? What phenomena make their appearance during its reunion? In what manner does it affect the patient, as to his power of walking, after reunion has taken place. 93. If we attend to the opinion of authors, on this fracture, we will find that they represent it in very dismal colours, as if it were necessarily productive of the most serious effects. Inflammation of the parts adjacent to the neck of the os femoris, numerous and repeated abscesses arising from this inflammation, propagating themselves externally and communicating with the interior of the joint, gangrene itself, as Morgagni remarks in a particular case, convulsions of the limb, an œdema occurring in it, and a slow fever destroying the patient by degrees; such is the dismal catalogue of misfortunes, generally considered as necessarily attendant on the kind of fracture under consideration. Bruninghausen remonstrated against this fatal prognosis of authors, and Siebold, one of the most celebrated German practitioners, among a great number of cases that fell under his care, had no such accidents to encounter. Desault never experienced them. Doubtless they are prevented by our more exact and more skilful modes of treatment. It is thus that under a more judicious treatment, fractures of the olecranon and of the rotula, are no longer marked with those terrible consequences formerly attributed to them.