Thousands of sufferers have tried truss after truss in _hopes_ they would finally get one that would do it; and to this day haven't found such a truss. All trusses and "appliances" _claim_ to hold you together. But ordinary trusses-- those with bands or belts or springs around the body, those with leg-straps, those sold by drug-stores and "Hernia Specialists"-- are absolutely _wrong_ in principle, construction and action. They are like trousers worn without suspenders or belt-- continually slipping-- you've got to keep adjusting and "hitching them up." The "harness" shifts or pulls the holding pads _away_ from the rupture opening. Thus your rupture is continually coming out-- Nature never gets the ghost of a chance to start any healing process. But even if such trusses _did_ hold the rupture in place, that _alone_ could never result in cure; couldn't even result in improvement. Because that alone does nothing whatever to _strengthen_ the weakened muscles, or to overcome the muscle _lifelessness_, the conditions which _cause_ rupture. No man ever made his _arm_ strong by not _using_ it. And if a truss does nothing _more_ than hold the rupture in _place_, the _muscles_ at the rupture opening are never _used_, get no _exercise_, so they grow constantly _weaker_ instead of _stronger_. We have had cases here at the Institute where, for lack of _activity_, the muscles around the rupture opening had withered almost completely away. And usually, in addition to lack of use, the deadening, benumbing pressure from a wrong truss was partly responsible for that withered or deadened condition of the muscles. We can do nothing in cases like that. Neither can an operation or anything else. It is entirely too late. Like a man whose _arm_ has been _broken_. While carried in a sling or plaster cast, the arm tends to lose its _strength_-- loses it through lack of use. And if, after the bone has knit, the arm is still carried in a sling, never used, its muscles would soon _atrophy_ or become _dead_, weaken and waste away until useless. A _doctor_ would insist that the arm be _used_ or _exercised_ as soon as the bone had knit, thus gradually restoring it to strength. Same way with rupture. It can be _cured_ or made _better_ only by _strengthening_ the weakened muscles, gently _exercising_ them, giving them support which takes the _strain_ off them while _helping_ them do their work until, gradually, they _regain_ their _full_ strength and _need_ no help. Yet we of the Cluthe Rupture Institute are the only people to-day who take that physiological fact into consideration. How to _apply_ our knowledge of that physiological fact, _how_ to exercise and thus strengthen the weak ruptured parts while at the same time _supporting_ and holding them in _place_ wasn't the easiest thing in the world to discover.