THE NERVOUS SYSTEM 369 



wound may be cauterized, and caustics in solution answer best, as 

 they get well into the bottom of the wound ; solid caustics are not 

 so reliable. 



613. Pasteur, the great French scientist, who, for a number ol 

 years, devoted a great amount of time and ability to conducting 

 experiments, in order to find a preventive for this direful scourge, at 

 last found that portions of the spinal cord of rabbits, which he had 

 previously rendered rabid by inoculating with the virus, could be 

 attenuated to a variety of strengths. When these preparations of 

 the virus of rabies are injected daily into the body of a patient that 

 has had the misfortune to be bitten by a rabid animal, the body is 

 said to be rendered immune from the disease. The success which 

 has attended this treatment, and the large number of cases that 

 have been inoculated, almost render it imperative that no time 

 should be lost in placing a bitten subject under the Pasteur 

 treatment. The idea that underlies treatment by inoculation is to 

 bring the structures of the body into such a condition that the rabid 

 virus fails to find suitable food for its development and multiplica- 

 tion. In this way, though the germ has been introduced into the 

 body, the disease may be prevented. Fortunately, owing to the 

 general enforcement of the muzzling order for dogs, this country 

 has been practically free for some time past from this distressing 

 malady. Rabies is a scheduled disease under the Contagious 

 Diseases (Animals) Act. 



614. Tetanus, or Lock-Jaw. — This is a malady that is char- 

 acterized by a continuous, stretched, tense, and rigid condition of 

 certain voluntary muscles of the body. It is of a fearfully fatal 

 nature, and, in some cases, in its acute and later stages, simulates 

 rabies. Until very lately, it also was described as an affection of the 

 nervous system ; but it is now said to be due to a germ termed the 

 drum-stick bacillus, so called from its resemblance to a drum-stick. 

 Tetanus is of common occurrence in the horse, more particularly in 

 hot climates, and is met with in three forms, acute, subacute, and 

 chronic, the first being the most fatal. It was formerly classified 



under two heads, and, when no cause could be found, it was called 



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