Chronic osteomyelitis is recognised as a very old disease, but acute osteomyelitis appears to have been understood only in the last 50 or so years. Until the latter part of the nineteenth century, acute osteomyelitis was only rarely recognised, except as a complication of open fractures or local sepsis. According to Wilensky (1927) the term osteomyelitis was probably coined by Nelaton in 1844. Acute osteomyelitis has always been a serious disease because of the risk to the life of the patient as well as its tendency to chronicity and recurrence. Recent improvements in surgical care and chemotherapy have made it less