Dr. MAQUET, the foremost disciple of Professor PAUWELS' and the orthopae dic heir to the PAUWELS' concepts of osteotomy of the hip for arthritis, has assembled in this one book the strongest and most lucid contemporary statement of the principles and practice of this very important school of hip surgery. Professor PAUWELS' contributions to the understanding of the biomechanics of the hip and to the concepts and execution of osteotomy of the hip for arthritis are outstanding and timeless. With clarity, Dr. MAQUET articulates this position and refines it further in the light of his own investiga tion. While other investigators, of course, differ on individual concepts or princi ples in this book or disagree with specific positions, assumptions, or conclu sions, it is clear to all that this book is a benchmark work. Dr. MAQUET, as Professor PAUWELS always did, illustrates his text lavishly with beautiful examples of individual cases illuminating the principles ad vanced. But in addition, he has gone further and presents long-term follow-up data, quantifying the results of these surgical precepts as experienced in his own practice. It is a work that has been long sought and is richly received. Boston, Massachusetts, 1984 WILLIAM H. HARRIS, M.D.

It is matter of some surprise that this treasury of information concerning the centres of gravity of various parts of the human body has remained hidden not only from the English speaking world for obvious reasons, but also to some degree from the Ger mans themselves. What is less surprising is t 1at this work is a monument to the renouned German thoroughness as demon strated by the relentless pursuit of data and the meticulous ac curacy of the conclusions. However, these scientific investigations carried out in Leipzig must be viewed in the intellectual climate of the time. In the lat ter half of the nineteenth century, and later, Germany underwent an intellectual explosion. It was the age of Rhumkorff, Max Planck, the Weber brothers and Gottingen University. It was said that science came to life during discussions on the train be tween Gottingen and Berlin. So the scene was set and Braune and Fischer made good use of it and fulfilled their role as mem bers of the Royal Scientific Society of Saxony. When Pauwels (1935) analysed the static and dynamic forces exerted on the hip joint when standing and when walking, he needed data concerning the centres of gravity of the human body and of its different segments. I was faced with the same pre requisite when I studied the forces acting on the knee (1976)."

Pathological conditions affecting the hip and knee joints occupy a particular place amongst the important orthopaedic entities affect ing the extremities. On the one hand they are relatively frequent and on the other they mean for the patient limitation of his ability to walk, because of their considerable detrimental effects. A purposeful basic treatment of these joint diseases (and here osteoarthritis takes pride of place) is only possible if it stems from a reliable biomechanical analysis of the normal and pathological stressing of the joint in question. Whilst the situation in the hip can be considered to be fundamentally clarified, a comprehensive representation of the knee is still lacking, particularly when taking into account the latest knowledge of biomechanics. Recently our concepts of the kinematics of the knee have been completely changed, but the clinically important question of articular stressing remains unanswered. Dr. Maquet has carried out pioneer work in this field for some years in adapting, by analogy, to the knee joint principles already accepted for the hip joint. Since the knee is not a ball and socket joint, a complicated problem arises for which new thoughts are necessary. The results of the numerous operations carried out by Dr. Maquet according to the biomechanical considerations demon strate that his thinking is fundamentally correct. Above all, it is here again proven (as earlier in the case of the hip) that healing of osteoarthritis depends decisively on reducing and evenly dis tributing joint pressure.