148 TETANUS. 



At a meeting of the Imperial Royal Society of Physicians of 

 Vienna (British Medical Journal, July 25, 1888) Eiselsberg gave 

 an account of a case of tetanus in Billroth's clinic: A woman, 

 aged forty, drove a splinter of wood into the palm of her hand 

 while scrubbing the floor. A fragment of the splinter was ex- 

 tracted by her husband. During the course of the next week 

 an abscess formed in the hand ; this was opened by the attending 

 physician. On the twelfth day after the injury the woman was 

 admitted into Billroth's clinic with typical symptoms of a severe 

 attack of tetanus, which lasted four weeks. She afterward re- 

 covered to a great extent, and was discharged at her own request. 

 At that time she still presented slight contractions of the affected 

 limb. Two mouths later a suppurating fistula formed, and a small 

 splinter of wood came away in the discharge. The wound then 

 completely healed, and the patient made a perfect recovery. 

 Eiselsberg used the extracted piece of wood for making cultures. 

 Two rabbits were inoculated with the culture thus obtained, one of 

 which succumbed to tetanus on the sixth day after inoculation, 

 while the second one, which was inoculated at a later date, showed 

 marked symptoms of tetanus, such as increased irritability, trismus, 

 pleurosthotonus, etc. 



Giordano (" Contribute all' Eziologia del Tetano," Griorn. delta 

 Acad. di Med. di Torino, 1887, Nos. 3, 4) performed his experi- 

 mental work on the following cases of tetanus in the laboratory of 

 Perroueito. The patient was a man forty years old, who fell from 

 a hayloft upon the frozen ground, and was brought to the hospital 

 twenty hours later with a complicated fracture of the forearm. The 

 wound, which was covered with dirt, was enlarged, drained, and 

 partly closed ; on the fourth day trismus, and on the seventh day 

 death from well-marked tetanus. Immediately after death, blood 

 was taken from the wound of the median nerve, and fragments of 

 a thrombus from a vein of the affected limb were also removed and 

 preserved in sterilized beef-tea. A piece of necrotic tissue from the 

 wound contained microbes, but not the bacillus described byNico- 

 laier. Inoculations with blood and fragments of internal organs 

 failed to produce tetanus. Inoculations with pus from the wound 

 and fragments of thrombus caused tetanus in rabbits and guinea- 

 pigs. Small fragments of straw taken from the place where the 

 patient fell, inserted under the skin of a rabbit, produced tetanus 

 in three days. The pus, among other microbes, contained few of 

 the characteristic bacilli. Injections of pus taken from the tetanic 

 animal produced tetanus in other rabbits. Inoculations with tissue 

 from the medulla oblongata did not cause the disease. Successful 

 inoculations were made from the second and third rabbits. Injec- 

 tions of dust taken from the place where the patient was injured, 



