I have used the word spontaneous advisedly in order to convey the idea that external trauma, accident or disease is not necessarily involved in the cases I have observed. These dislocations were uncomplicated in the customary sense but not acutally so, because they were all associated with destruction of portions of the articular capsule by use. This, to be sure, is a traumatic destruction but not in the usual sense, for the trauma concerned was not due to external causes but resulted from use of the extremity.
Dislocation of the tendon of the long head of the biceps brachii, uncomplicated by the dislocation of the joint or by external trauma, remains an almost unrecorded and also a disputed thing. After a review of the literature, White1 in 1884 came to the conclusion that the case observed by him probably was the only genuine one up to that time.
Since