54 TETANUS — LOCKED JAW. 



corn. 3oth day. — Has been gradually amending, and is now well enough to 

 discontinue medicine, and take exercise. His treatment consisted in blood- 

 letting and purging, and attention to the cranial wound. 



The Symptoms of tetanus are of that strikingly remarkable and 

 even appalling character, that a person who has once witnessed the 

 disease in its confirmed stages never afterwards seems to have the 

 impression it has made erased from his mind. In its earliest onset, 

 however, it requires an experienced eye to detect it. 



At the beginning, the horse is observed to carry his neck 

 unusually stiff, and to evince some unusual inflexibility in the 

 movements of his back and loins. The owner complains of this, and 

 soon discovers that the animal does not feed with his accustomed 

 appetite. He imagines this to arise from sore throat, and seems 

 confirmed in this opinion from some difficulty the horse evinces in 

 swallowing. Should he attempt to open the animal's mouth with 

 a view of examining its interior, to his surprise he finds the jaws 

 separable only to a short distance, though the lips possess their usual 

 mobility, and there issues from between them a discharge of saliva. 

 Moreover, he finds the horse unusually irritable ; cannot bear to 

 have his head pulled about ; every time the groom attempts to lay 

 hold of it, he throws up his head, and at the instant he does so, the 

 haw is protruded over the sight of the eye. Such symptoms leave 

 no room for doubt about the presumed or rather actual presence 

 of tetanus or locked jaw. 



Tetanus is confirmed when the spasm has extended to the 

 muscles of the body generally, and the horse stands, stiffened in 

 every part, with his head erect and his limbs stretched out, as 

 though he were a stuffed horse, or but the ghost of the animal he 

 was in health: indeed, with his neck contracted into the form 

 called " ewed," and his head drawn upwards and backwards, the 

 horse assumes the deer-like aspect, which gave rise to the disease 

 being called the "stag-evil." The tetanic countenance is very 

 characteristic; it has a sort of terrific expression, and, as the fatal 

 termination draws near, turns haggard and ghastly. Every time 

 the patient is excited the eyes assume a wild fixed stare, and look 

 almost as though they were ready to start from their orbits, the 



