TETANUS BACILLUS. 409 



abundant in street dirt and in tilled ground which 

 has been fertilized with manure. Nicolaier found 

 it in twelve out of eighteen samples of earth. It 

 is less abundant in timber land. Such a distribu- 

 tion is easily accounted for, since the bacillus 

 seems normally to be an inhabitant of the intesti- 

 nal tract of the horse, cow and sheep, and is often 

 found in that of man and other animals. It oc- 

 curs on dirty clothing and readily gains access to 

 dwellings with dust in which it may be blown and 

 carried about. Tetanus frequently develops in 

 gunshot wounds in which dirty clothing is carried 

 into the tissue, and several instances of house 

 tetanus have been noted in which a number of in- 

 dividuals in the same dwelling have contracted the 

 disease following injury. Particular localities may 

 be heavily infected. In certain tropical districts a 

 large percentage of new-born infants die of tetanus 

 neohatorum, and puerperal tetanus has prevailed 

 alarmingly in Bombay. It has been suggested 

 that the custom of bleaching the linen on the 

 ground may be responsible for the prevalence of 

 the disease in these localities, but from the fact 

 that it has decreased under aseptic practices the 

 general lack of surgical precautions is probably of 

 greater importance. Tetanus has resulted from 

 the injection of impure gelatin for hemostatic 

 purposes. The bacillus has been found in sea 

 water. 



The ability of the bacillus to proliferate outside 

 the animal body has not been determined. Some 

 observers hold that it exists as a vegetative organ- 

 ism only in the intestinal tract of animals, but the 

 possibility of proliferation in soil is by no means 

 excluded, particularly since it is so often found in 



