I cannot too strongly protest against the therapeutic doctrine of ‘rest’ being so caricatured as to imprison a joint in splints for weeks or months at a time; the last hope of rescuing it from permanent uselessness may thus be destroyed. Intercurrent attacks of inflammation may peremptorily require a joint to be rested; to be placed for a few days on a back splint, to be poulticed, or even mildly blistered; but this is quite a different thing from putting it, whether inflamed or not, into a splint-case or box, and condemning it to a chronic fixed position.