PRINCIPLES OF VETERINARY SURGERY 421 



ficient. The clinician is absolutely disarmed and must stand 

 without being able to relieve the affliction of his patient. 



TETANUS. 



DEFINITION. — Tetanus is a local infectious disease 

 caused by an anaerobic micro-organism — the bacillus of Nic- 

 olaier — which generates a poison to the nervous system that 

 provokes spasmodic contraction of the whole or a part of 

 the striated muscles. 



Tetanus attacks man and the domestic animals. It is 

 particularly common in the horse, the donkey and the mule, 

 and is also observed in a decreasing ratio of frequency in 

 the small ruminants, the hog, the ox and the carnivora. The 

 disease has been reproduced in all of these animals by in- 

 oculation by cultures or soluble products of the bacillus. It 

 has also been thus produced in the mouse, the cavy, the 

 chicken and the frog. 



HISTORY. — Tetanus has been observed in man and the 

 domestic animals since the most remote antiquity. The 

 works of Hippocrates describe it, and it also attracted the 

 attention of Hippiaters. Although closely studied in the 

 horse from the symptomatic point of view by Solleysel, 

 Vatel, Gohier, Trasbot, etc., and in the ox by Gelle, Roche- 

 Lubin and Cruzel tetanus has, until late years, remained a 

 mysterious disease the pathogenesis of which has been the 

 subject of most conflicting theories. The numerous rela- 

 tions, published up to 1884, ^'"^ confined to a discussion of 

 the, gravity of the disease and its symptomatic features, but 

 taught nothing as. to the nature of its lesions ; and the va- 

 rieties of treatment recommended serve only to demonstrate 

 the futility of therapeutics. Tetanus was then regarded as 

 a neurosis. They recognized an essential or rheumatic teta- 

 nus due to the action of cold, and a traumatic tetanus due 

 to accidental wounds or surgical operations. It was thought 



