In no field of medicine or surgery has the significance of prostatic infection been brought out more strikingly than in orthopaedic surgery, and, even yet, the importance of this type of disease is insufficiently emphasized. In the presence of other sources of infection, it is impossible to be too dogmatic about the exact rôle played by prostatitis in the production of joint disturbances. However, one has only to follow from a clinical point of view the degree of improvement which some of these patients make in every respect, when adequate investigation and care of the prostate are instituted, to realize the importance and efficacy of this method of approach.

Certainly, sufficient evidence exists to show that prostatic infection, even though latent, is in many instances an important etiological agent in the production of pain in the lower back and in many cases of joint disease. Clinical experience has proved that, despite the necessity for prostatic supervision and the tendency toward recurrence of infection in the gland, symptomatic treatment of prostatitis, either alone or in conjunction with the care of other focal infections and general hygienic measures which improve the patient's general physical state, is, in the great majority of instances, accompanied by definite alleviation of the symptoms of joint disease.