If the patient cannot return the protrusion speedily, a surgeon should be secured at all costs--the patient meanwhile lying in bed with an ice bag or cold cloths over the rupture. The surgeon will reduce the protrusion under ether, or operate. Strangulation of any rupture may occur, but of course it is less likely to happen in those who wear a well-fitting truss; still it is always a dangerous possibility, and this fact and the liability of the rupture's increasing in size make a surgical operation for complete cure advisable in proper subjects. =Treatment.=--Two means of treatment are open to the ruptured: the use of the truss and surgical operation. By the wearing of a truss, fifty-eight per cent of ruptures recover completely in children under one year. In children from one to five years, with rupture, ten per cent get well with the truss. Statistics show that in rupture which has been acquired after birth but five per cent recover with a truss after the age of fifteen, and but one per cent after thirty. The truss must be worn two years after cure of the rupture in children, and in adults practically during the rest of their lives. A truss consists of a steel spring which encircles the body, holding in place a pad which fits over the seat of hernia. The Knight truss is one of the best. The truss is most satisfactory in ruptures which can be readily returned. In very small or large hernias, and in those which are not reducible, the action of the truss is not so effective. In irreducible ruptures there is likely to be constipation and colic produced, and strangulation is more liable to occur. A truss having a hollow pad may prove of service in small irreducible ruptures, but no truss is of much value in large hernias of this kind. Every person with a reducible rupture should wear a proper truss until the rupture is cured by some means. Such a truss should keep in the hernia without causing pain or discomfort. It should be taken off at night, and replaced in the morning while the patient is lying down. In cases where the protrusion appears during the night a truss must be worn day and night, but often a lighter form will serve for use in bed. To test the efficiency of a truss let the patient stoop forward with his knees apart, and hands on the knees, and cough. If the truss keeps the hernia in, it is suitable; if not, it is probably unsuitable. Operation for complete cure of the hernia is successful in 95 cases out of 100, in suitable subjects, in the ruptures in the groin. The death rate is but about 1 in 500 to 1,000 operations when done by surgeons skilled in this special work. Patients with very large and irreducible hernias, and those who are very fat and in advanced life, are unfavorable subjects for operation. In young men operation--if it can be done by a skillful surgeon and in a hospital with all facilities--is usually to be recommended in every case of rupture. Umbilical hernias and ventral hernias, following surgical operations,