52 TETANUS — LOCKED JAW. 



Mr. K. has likewise observed the disease to be more prevalent in 

 marshy grounds than in places dry and elevated; and has accom- 

 panied his observation with the remark, that a cure is more likely 

 to be effected in the latter than in the former situations. 



Temperature. — The late Mr. Henderson, V.S., Edinburgh, 

 sent the particulars of a case of tetanus to The Veterinarian for 

 1839, wherein the exciting cause appeared to have been a '' cold 

 stable with an insufficient roof through which the rain had fallen 

 upon the horse," already " in low condition, and probably labouring 

 under some derangement of the digestive organs." A similar case 

 is recorded by Mr. Spooner, V.S., Blandford, in The VETERINA- 

 RIAN for 1830: his words are — *'I considered the tetanus to 

 have been caused by exposure to cold. The mare (to whom the 

 disease occurred) was turned out for a winter's run with two other 

 horses." The cold proved most intense, succeeded by a thaw, 

 during which, in consequence of her companions refusing to admit 

 her under shelter, " she was exposed to the droppings from the 

 thatch upon her hind parts." 



Central Tetanus may be defined to be, that kind or form of 

 the disease whose seat involves the roots or origins of the nerves : 

 this may be the brain ; commonly it is the spinal marrow. Ex- 

 amples of such affections, and on record, do not appear to be want- 

 ing, though pathologists have not hitherto succeeded in making any 

 digest of them likely to prove serviceable to us in practice. In a 

 large proportion of cases of centripetal and central tetanus, the brain 

 sometimes, and a great deal oftener the spinal marrow, has evinced 

 anormal alterations of some sort ; mostly of vascularity, congestion, 

 inflammation, effusion either between the membranes or into the 

 ventricles, softening of the medullary substance, &c. ; but there is 

 not of these morbid changes one that we dare single out as proper to 

 tetanus : we have far more reason for supposing, with Messrs. Hen- 

 derson and Karkeek, that the disorder derives its origin in nervous 

 sympathy, springing from an over-vascular or actually inflamed con- 

 dition of the pyloric regions of the stomach and duodenum, or of 

 the sympathetic nerve and its ganglia. 



Messrs. Gelle and Leblanc, who have bestowed unusual pains in 



