So much has been published during the past two years in the continental medical journals and in the daily newspapers about the new French method of treating Pott's disease that we feel warranted in briefly narrating the facts and in critically discussing this new surgical procedure.
Spinal curvatures are, broadly speaking, of four kinds: 1, simple posterior curvatures; 2, anterior curvatures; 3, lateral curvatures; and 4, the posterior curves or angles of spinal caries.
As to the first class of simple posterior curvatures, or the ordinary round shoulders most frequently seen in adolescence and old age, and the posterior curvatures of rachitic infants, nothing so far as I know has been attempted in the way of immediate and forcible straightening under anesthesia.
As to the anterior curvatures, again nothing has been attempted. Indeed cases of this class are seldom met with even by orthopedic surgeons of large experience, and their