CHAPTER XVI. 



Tetanus. 



Tetanus a Specific Infective Disease — A Wound Fever— Organism found 

 by Nicoiaier in the Soil taken from Streets and Fields — Experiments 

 on Animals — Symptoms of Disease — Pure Cultivations Obtained — 

 Description of Organisms-— Characteristic Shape — Spore Formation — 

 Organism Anserobic — Cultivations — Kitasato's Method of Cultivating 

 the Organism — The Bacillus found only at the Seat of Inoculation — 

 Wide Distribution of Spores — Bossano's Examination of Earth — 

 Vaillard and Vincent's Observations — Tetnaus Bacillus a Facultative 

 Saprophyte — Conditions under which Tetanus is Contracted — Poisoned 

 Arrows, 



Traumatic tetanus, or convulsions resulting from poison- 

 ing associated with an open wound, was for long sus- 

 pected to be the result of some condition similar to septic 

 or hospital fever ; that it was an infective disease was 

 recognized by many of the older surgeons, and attempts 

 were made at a very early date to treat it as a traumatic 

 infective disease. That this -poisoning was the result of 

 the activity of an organism, which made its way to a wound 

 and there flourished and gave rise to the characteristic pro- 

 ducts and symptoms, was not the result of direct experiment 

 made with the object of finding out such an organism, 

 although attempts were not wanting to demonstrate its 

 presence in the wounds and along the course of the nerves 

 in cases of tetanus. All efforts, however, proved un- 

 successful until after an organism obtained from other 

 sources had been obtained and described, and an artificial 

 tetanus had been produced. 



In 1884 Nicoiaier, working with soils obtained from the 

 streets and from the fields, found that these when inoculated 

 into certain animals produced effects different from those 

 produced by soils taken from cultivated gardens and from 

 woods. The former he found, when a small particle was 

 placed in a little pocket under the skin of mice, rabbits, 



