In any examination, care must be taken hot to so place the patient as to cause his position to mask the lesion. An unnatural posture may be to him natural by reason of his condition. If now an attempt be made to cause him to assume the usually natural position, the result may be to obscure that which would be a clew to his disability. Close inspection should be made of a patient's habitual posture, gait, etc., as a preliminary step. One often gains thus valuable clews to his condition.
Inspection often reveals inequalities of waist-lines and hips.
A waist-line deeper cut on one side, usually accompanied by a higher or larger contour of the corresponding hip, is a frequent indication of a swerved spine. With the patient sitting slightly bent forward, the arms folded loosely or the hands resting lightly on the knees, the examiner stands behind the patient and passes his two index fingers, or the index and second fingers of the examining hand, carefully down the opposite sides of the vertebral spines. In such case there is usually, though not always, tenderness in the tissues upon the side of deviation, owing to the irritation by the process. In order not to mistake a bent spinous process for a lateral lesion of the vertebra, all such apparent lesions should be further tested by feeling out the transverse processes of the vertebra in question. Dr. Still uses these more than the spinous processes in identifying lateral lesions.