This teaching leads him to look for such causes of disease, which are meaningless to other methods of practice. The displacement may be both leg bones forward, inward or outward. In either case, the patient lies upon his back, the knee is flexed, the leg is elevated to a right angle with the thigh and fixed by an assistant, and strong traction is made upon the foot. The muscles draw the ankle into place. The leg may be forward, backward, inward, outward, or twisted.
Strong traction restores it to place.
In cases of slight backward luxation, short of dislocation, a good method is to have the patient lie on his back, hang the leg, bent at the knee, over the edge of the table, while the foot is supported between the practitioner s knees and his hands work in the popliteal region. The hamstring muscles are grasped by the two hands and stretched away laterally from the condyles of the femur, while the tibia and fibula are drawn forward. The toe invariably turns out. In the treatment of such conditions, fresh dislocations are set at once, but as in our practice many old dislocations are presented, the success of the treatment lies largely in knowing how to thoroughly prepare parts for adjustment. Much lies in our way of regarding disease, for even gross dislocations are often overlooked.