While it is quite true that to the Listerian theory and practice are almost wholly to be ascribed the favorable results of the major surgery of the present day, we must not forget the immeasurable benefits to the diseased, the injured, and the crippled that have arisen from patient efforts and occasional brilliant intuition that have had no connection with the germ theory of infection. Take the case of a broken leg, for example, an injury that formerly condemned the victim to weeks and weeks of confinement to bed, together with the suffering and danger almost inseparable from the old methods of the long straight splint and tight bandaging. At the present time he who has met with such a misfortune is commonly able to be about on crutches within a few days, and his broken bone mends while he is cultivating his appetite and indulging in pleasant intercourse with his fellow-men. This great change has been made possible by one device after another, invented by different men. Josiah Crosby introduced the use of sticking-plaster for extension, instead of the chafing bands previously employed; Gurdon Buck substituted elastic extension by means of a weight and pulley for the rude and arbitrary traction in vogue before; James L. Little devised the plaster-of-Paris splint, whereby broken bones were immobilized with hardly appreciable discomfort; and Henry B. Sands established the safety and practicability of applying the plaster-of-Paris splint almost immediately after the reduction ("setting") of the fracture. In the meantime Nathan R. Smith and John T. Hodgen had demonstrated the advantages of suspending a fractured limb from above. All these men were Americans; surely our country has contributed powerfully to the well-being of the subjects of fracture. Other Americans, notably Lewis A. Sayre, have enabled sufferers with joint disease, including the dreaded hip disease, to run about and gain health and strength, instead of languishing in bed. Sayre, too, by his suspension treatment and the plaster-of-Paris jacket, set the hunchback on his feet at a stage in his disease in which before he had been forced to prolonged and painful recumbency.