At another meeting of the profession there was the same _pro_ and _con_ argumentation. The obvious “willingness to wound,” but yet “afraid to strike” in the face of the overwhelming testimony in favour of the _bete noir_ of the profession:—the healer outside the fold “who in the wilderness doth stray.” At this meeting Dr. Bruce Clarke read a paper on the practice of the Bone-setter, in which after briefly alluding to the variety of cases that found their way to the Bone-setter, and derived benefits from his treatment, he adverted to the pathology of stiff joints, and showed from observations of several cases which he had been able to examine after removal of the limb, that adhesions were usually found outside joints and tendon sheaths, and were due to contractions of the connective tissue of the limb. Adhesions were rarely formed inside the tendon sheaths or joints, and when they were, the disease was far more serious and rarely yielded to treatment. In cases of old stiff joints, the skin, and probably the subcutaneous tissues, became weakened and atrophied by disease, and were so rendered more liable to injury—in proof of which he cited several examples of tearing and lacerating the skin without the employment of due violence. The usual history, he tells us, of the class of cases that came under the hands of the Bone-setter was this:— The patient met with an injury resulting in a dislocation, or fracture, or perhaps, only a severe bruise, or a sprain. He readily recovered up to a certain point; but when all inflammation had subsided, there remained a stiffness accompanied by pain on movement. In other cases there were periodical attacks of synotictus. The treatment in all such cases was active movement, with or without chloroform, which was usually accompanied by a click or crack, ascribed by the Bone-setter to the replacement of a bone, but which was due to the freeing of the connective tissue bands. In slight cases, one violent flexion might cure the trouble of months: in severe cases, the treatment might be measured by months rather than minutes. The pathology of such cases was as well marked as that of iritis, where there was the advantage of seeing the adhesions not only form but rupture and disappear. He expressed his obligation to Mr. Wharton Hood’s lecture which had induced him to study the subject. The difficulty of these cases was the selection of time for rupture, and for rest. Signs of inflammation were their guides in that matter. Rest should be regulated to its proper position in surgery, and should not be kept up when it increased instead of abating the patients’ troubles.