Rupture of the Intervertebral Disk

An account of rupture of the intervertebral disk as an important clinical entity must include not only an evaluation of the pertinent literature, but also the experience of my contemporaries and myself. There is little in the older literature that has not already been noted, and my function, as I see it, is to use the facts contained in it as a background for the important work leading up to present knowledge of the subject. If I have omitted any important contributions to the subject, I trust that such omissions will be drawn to my attention in order that such an error may be corrected in any future publication. In an interesting old book by Charles Bell,1written in 1824, is an illustration which perhaps is one of the earliest drawings of a rupture of the intervertebral disk, though this, like so many other later references, is concealed under