Fig. 1. finger; 2. thumb; 3. hand and radius forward; 4. radius back; 5. humerus; 6. shoulder joint; 7. humerus; 8. radius forward. PLATE III.—DISLOCATIONS:— 35 9. elbow; 10. radius back; 11. jaw; 12. hip outward; 13. hip inwards. PLATE IV.—DISLOCATIONS:— 68 14. shoulder joint; 15. foot inwards; 16. foot backwards; 17. knee-joint; 18. elbow. PLATE V.—FRACTURES:— 88 19. un-united fracture; 20. pelvis; 21. humerus; 22. scapula; 23. jaw; 24. femur. PLATE VI.—FRACTURES:— 95 25. humerus, lower extremity; 26. humerus; 27. ulna; 28. leg (fibula). PLATE VII.—FRACTURES ETC.:— 103 29. a dislocated spine; 30. Colles’ fracture; 31. Colles’ fracture; 32. fractured patella; 33. fractured femur; 34. ruptured biceps. PLATE VIII.—RUPTURES AND DISLOCATIONS:— 116 36. Pott’s fracture (showing sinews); 37. Pott’s fracture (badly set); 38. rupture of the rectus femoris; 39. dislocation of the metatarsus; 40. dislocation of metatarsal bones. [Illustration: PLATE I.—THE HUMAN SKELETON.] THE ART OF THE BONE-SETTER. CHAPTER I. _BONE-SETTERS AND THEIR ART._ “At present my desire is to have a good Bone-setter.”—_Sir J. Denham._ These words, which Dr. Johnson used to illustrate the word Bone-setter in his famous dictionary, are better known than any other quotation bearing on the ancient art of the Bone-setter. There are scattered through the realms of English literature frequent allusions to those, who, in times past, practised this special branch of the surgical art, for the art is as old as the history of civilization itself, and was probably coeval with the fall of man. The assuaging of pain and the cure of injuries caused by external violence would naturally excite the ingenuity of the sufferer and suggest contrivances to those around them. The Egyptians are credited with a knowledge of surgery, though they appear to have relied on incantation and astrology for their medical practice. It is somewhat curious that one of our leading medical journals should have suggested, within a brief period, that Bone-setters likewise had recourse to charms and magic—thus credulity, in those who would ridicule the credulous, repeats itself even in these enlightened days. The intermediate history of surgery is full of strange changes and mutations; but, apart from the ordinary practices of the art, (with its cauterization and its cruel operations,) the cure of sprains, the reducing of dislocations and fractures, appears to have been practised by those who were neither leeches or barber-chirurgeons. In the seventeenth century when Harvey was studying the circulation of the blood, and Wiseman publishing those treatises which are the foundation of the modern system of surgery, one Friar Moulton had published _The Compleat Bone-setter_, and in