If the thigh piece is curved forwards, and particularly if the limb is built with a very slight flexion of the knee, the stump remains slightly flexed at the hip and the patient feels as if he is sitting in the apparatus.
When the thigh piece is straight, an uncomfortable pressure is produced by the edge of the bucket against the ischium. It may be added that extension of the hip is very often impaired, particularly in patients with a short stump: The extensor muscles being divided, the flexors cause contraction into a flexed position, the more so the shorter the stump is. If the thigh piece is straight, the short stump cannot follow the movement of extension necessary in walking; it slips out of the bucket if the anterior lip of the latter is too low.
The principles are the same for the leather bucket, known as the French pattern.
Figs. 4,5 and 6
Figs. 7,8 and 9
Figure 4 shows the circular bucket (almost always too large) of the poor man's peg leg, attached to the body by a belt which is fastened to a projection upwards from the outer side of the bucket. Figure 5 shows the oblique bucket, with symmetrical anterior and posterior borders. Figure 6 one with the anterior border oblique, the posterior border being cut away. Figure 7 shows the double obliquity, downwards and backwards, of the bucket. The convexities of the bucket and thigh piece, in the type which we consider to be the best, are shown in figure 8 (convexity outwards), and figure 9 (convexity forwards).
In this the thigh piece is strengthened by two lateral steels (to the lower end of which is fixed the leg piece) joined posteriorly by a semicircular cross piece on which the ischium should rest ([Fig. 13]).