58 TETANUS — LOCKED JAW. 



allowable by veterinary surgeons ; and I would 1 could add, that 

 these operations had been followed by the happy effects which, theo- 

 retically, they seemed to promise. It has been argued that, as the 

 tetanus is caused or kept up by local irritation transmitted to the 

 brain, so, if the source of the irritation be annihilated, or the nervous 

 cords through which it is conveyed to the brain be divided, the 

 sensorial disturbance, together with the spasms dependent upon it, 

 ought to cease. And in some few cases, and particularly where the 

 disconnection has been effected at an early period, such felicitous 

 results have followed : in others, however, no apparent advantage 

 whatever has been derived from these operations. Baron Larrey 

 indeed observes — " les extirpations du bras et les amputations des 

 jambes furent generalement heureuses;" but then it must be re- 

 membered, this observation had its origin in the Baron's practice 

 during the Russian campaign, where amputation was performed 

 the mon^ent the disease manifested itself: on the other hand, 

 private practice has shewn in too many instances that delay is fatal 

 to success. Sir Benjamin Brodie advises that the entire injured 

 nerve or portion of nerve be removed. The late Mr. John Field 

 was ill the habit of applying lunar caustic freely and extensively to 

 any wounded or abraded part. Mr. James Turner, in a letter to the 

 Editor of The Veterinarian, in 1832, represents his practice to 

 be " to make not only deep crucial incisions with a scalpel within the 

 wound, but also numerous incisions through the sound skin in the 

 vicinitv of the wound, and sometimes to surround it in this manner," 

 his object being twofold : — to release any '' embarrassed nervous 

 fibril ; and to create a new action, or rather the return of vascular 

 excitement, m the part injured." ''And whenever," adds Mr. 

 Turner, *' this counter-irritation has been succeeded by a counter- 

 suppuration, the cases have invariably done well ; but it would be 

 vain to look for such a result in a protracted case." Mr. Turner 

 has likewise observed, that, after the operation of docking afresh 

 for tetanus, the exposed surface of the stump of the tail assumes a 

 livid deadly aspect, indicating "a most apparent loss of energy in 

 the arterial trunks, the jets of blood from them wanting that vigour 

 which exists in the healthy adult horse ;" and that '' the blood in the 

 venous trunks is literal] v as black as ink.'' 



