NATURE AND CAUSATION. 405 



strychnine, which imitates the tetanic symptoms in a very 

 striking manner, so that you may at will develop the pheno- 

 mena of tetanus in an animal by giving him strychnine, or 

 injecting it into his blood, but you cannot cause it by external 

 injury.' 



The fact, so well known to all veterinary surgeons, that 

 numbers of animals may be subjected to treatment in every 

 respect similar, whether this treatment be exposure to vicissi- 

 tudes of weather, imperfect location and bad sanitary condi- 

 tions, or a particular method and time of performing an 

 operation ; or that they may be the subjects of accidents in 

 all essential particulars alike, and yet that of these numbers 

 only a small proportion, and possibly the most unlikely sub- 

 jects according to our powers of judging, become affected with 

 tetanus, seems to point to some peculiar individual suscepti- 

 bility then existing to this special excitability and disturbance 

 of nervous power in the animals thus acted upon. 



What this special susceptibility may be, or what conditions 

 are needful to be complied with, even supposing the suscepti- 

 bility to be present ere the state of so-called exalted polarity, 

 evidencing itself in those fearful muscular spasms characteristic 

 of tetanus, is reached, we do not know. 



From the fact that conditions precisely similar to those 

 exhibited in tetanus may be induced by absorption through 

 the blood of certain materials, particularly strychnine, many 

 are inclined to regard this disease as essentially and primarily 

 a blood affection. On this hypothesis the true cause of 

 tetanus is regarded as some morbific agent which, being 

 received into the animal system, finds its way through 

 the blood to the spinal centre, for which it has a special 

 affinity, thus disturbing, by malnutrition, its normal dynamic 

 action. In corroboration of the correctness of this view, we 

 are referred to what is stated as being well known, viz., that 

 the herdsmen of the provinces bordering on the Kiver Plate 

 have been long acquainted with the fact that tetanus is trans- 

 missible from animals to men through eating the flesh of the 

 former when these have died from this disease. This state- 

 ment, we suspect, requires confirmation, and, even if confirmed, 

 we have to remember that these individuals are exceptionally 

 situated as regards dietetic conditions, not at one particular 



