Davis's law

[2][3] The "stretch-hypertrophy rule" of that model states: "Intermittent stretch causes collagenous tissues to hypertrophy until the resulting increase in strength reduces elongation in tension to some minimum level".

Its earliest known appearance is in John Joseph Nutt's 1913 book Diseases and Deformities of the Foot, where Nutt outlines the law by quoting a passage from Davis's 1867 book, Conservative Surgery: Davis's writing on the subject exposes a long chain of competing theories on the subject of soft tissue contracture and the causes of scoliosis.

Davis's comments in Conservative Surgery were in the form of a sharp rebuke of lectures published by Louis Bauer of the Brooklyn Medical and Surgical Institute in 1862.

[8] Bauer sided with work published in 1851 by Julius Konrad Werner, director of the Orthopedic Institute of Konigsberg, Prussia.

Bulk mechanical properties, such as modulus, failure strain, and ultimate tensile strength, decrease over long periods of disuse as a result of micro-structural changes on the collagen fiber level.