484 PRiNcirLES Of veterinary stfRGERY 



the operation to which they were subjected (castration, am- 

 putation of the tail, umbiHcal hernia, cryptorchidectomy, 

 etc.), and not a single one contracted the disease. The sec- 

 ond group comprises 400 subjects which received the sertim 

 one, two, or four days after the accidental traumatism of 

 which they had been victims (street nails, nail punctures, 

 quittors, bites, etc.), soiled by earth or dung, and not one 

 succumbed from tetanus. Only one horse, treated five days 

 after the accident (pricked by a horse-shoer) presented teta- 

 nic symptoms, but the disease was the most benign imag- 

 inable. Injected too late to prevent the disease, the serum 

 considerably reduced its gravity. 



The results published by Nocard are of special import- 

 ance from the fact that the preventive treatment is now in 

 use in localities where the disease was so frequent that pro- 

 prietors refused to submit their animals to the usual opera- 

 tions, — castration, caudal amputation, etc., in the farm sta- 

 bles where tetanus had found victims before. Finally, dur- 

 ing the time occupied by the experiment, the veterinarians 

 who lost none of the 2,705 animals preventively treated, ob- 

 served 259 cases of tetanus not treated. Of these 191 were 

 horses, 57 rams, and 11 bovines. All of these points demon- 

 strate that antitetanic serum is absolutely effectual as a pre- 

 ventive. Among the cases which prove its efficacy the fol- 

 lowing is the most striking. A veterinary hospital became 

 infected to the extent that five out of eight surgical subjects 

 contracted tetanus. From the very moment that every ani- 

 mal operated upon received the serum, and out of 163 cas- 

 trations of horses placed in the same premises, not a single 

 case of tetanus occurred. 



The technique of preventive inoculation is simple. It 

 consists of the hypodermic injection of the serum in any part 

 of the body, preferably the region of the neck or shoulders. 

 Ttae qaantity used is 10 c.c. for the horse and bovines and 3 



