In this third edition I have persisted in my attempt to write a book on the conservative treatment of fractures which at one and the same time would be a vade-mecum for the junior man and an interesting treatise for the experienced surgeon. It might be considered that these two objectives are incompatible, and that it would have been better to have written a simple textbook for the junior and to have reserved my ponderings on the nature of fracture repair for a separate monograph. In the training of young surgeons I believe that the attempt to foster the habit of making clinical observations and questioning accepted beliefs ought to start from the earliest moment. There is still a great deal of fundamental information concerning the healing of fractures waiting to be deduced, by the process of logic and close reasoning, from clinical facts collected in the operating theatre and out-patient department.

There is a tendency to imagine that serious research nowadays can only come out of a laboratory, and that contributions from the pure act of thinking on clinical facts ended with the great clinicians of the past. The old clinicians had their faculties for observation by sight and touch heightened by the absence of X-rays and laboratory tests. But though the clinical acumen of the old observers was greater than ours, it was frequently offset by a strain of credulity, which is apparent in a different form among clinicians to-day.