The admirable papers by Codman1 published in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal on subacromial bursitis have been responsible for a great increase both in interest and in knowledge of the common disabilities of the shoulder girdle. Codman differentiated calcification in the supraspinatus tendon from subacromial bursitis. A review of recent reports, however, indicates that this differentiation is but rarely made and thereby justifies an effort to distinguish further that particular clinical disability which is dependent on a degenerative disease of the supraspinatus tendon, accompanied by the deposition of lime salts but not necessarily with inflammation within the subacromial bursa.
During the early period of more accurate observations on subdeltoid, or better subacromial, bursitis, calcification of the tendon was frequently mistaken for a bursitis, due to the failure to recognize that the area of calcification (fig. 1) rested beneath the inferior wall of the bursa but outside the true