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[Read before the Surgical Section of the Am. Med. Association, June, 1883.)
Ever since the first suggestion of the removal of the head of the femur by Mr. Charles White, in 1769, for morbus coxarius, and the execution of it first by Schmalz, in 1816, as stated by Dr. Sayre, Anthony White, in 1822, as claimed by Barwell, there has been great diversity of opinion among surgeons in regard to the propriety of this operation, a few favoring, and many, condemning it as being entirely useless, claiming that even when it succeeded in saving the life of the patient, it left a miserably deformed being unable to walk without the aid of crutch or cane, and the chances of cure were no greater than if the patient was allowed to depend upon the slow process of spontaneous exfoliation of the diseased bone, a process which was rarely accomplished before the