[Copyrighted by John Ridlon, M.D,]
Treatment:—It is the function of a normal hip joint to permit of motion in several directions and to sustain the weight of the body, both during walking and while standing at rest, without injury to its structure. When a joint becomes diseased these functions become restricted or abolished, motion is no longer possible, or possible to only a limited degree, and the joint refuses to sustain the superincumbent weight for any prolonged period.
If we study the clinical evidences presenting at a hip joint, as it passes from health to disease and back to health again, we find them to be somewhat as follows: all the muscles, whose functions it is to move the thigh on the pelvis, gradually become more and more rigid from invuluntary muscular spasm until all motion at the joint is abolished. The thigh becomes gradually flexed on the pelvis, and