VACCINES AND SERA 277 



The employment of this serum in veterinary practice is due 

 to the efforts of Nocard. He collected, now a long time ago, 

 2,708 cases of horses injected immediately after one of those 

 operations frequently followed by tetanus (castration, amputa- 

 tion of the tail, inguinal or umbilical hernia) ; not a single case 

 of tetanus occurred. A second group comprising 600 animals, 

 treated one to four or even more days after an accidental 

 wound (nail-prick, harrow-tooth wound, kicks, wounds soiled 

 with earth or manure, etc.), presented one single case of mild 

 tetanus (a horse treated five days after the accident, a nail- 

 prick in shoeing). The veterinary surgeons who supplied these 

 3,308 cases observed in their practice at the same time 314 

 cases of tetanus (of which 220 were horses) in animals not 

 treated with serum. In 705 equidae, wounded or operated 

 on, Labat observed three cases of tetanus among the un- 

 treated, not a single case among the treated animals. Accord- 

 ing to statistics supplied by eight veterinary surgeons to 

 Valine of Alfort, from 1898 to 1906, 13,126 animals were 

 inoculated as a preventive measure, and not one took tetanus. 

 During the same period, two of these surgeons alone had 

 139 cases of tetanus among animals not treated. At present 

 the Pasteur Institute supplies to veterinary surgeons more than 

 100,000 doses per annum. 



There is no reason known to science why man should not 

 derive a similar advantage. There exists, however, with 

 regard to the prophylactic serotherapy of tetanus in man a 

 distrust or scepticism which finds vent from lime to time in 

 the discussions of surgical societies or congresses. It has 

 been maintained that the employnient of preventive injections 

 has not affected the death rate from tetanus in Paris ; that 

 tetanus occurs fairly often in spite of prophylactic injections ; 

 that the conditions which permit of the prophylactic employ- 

 ment in veterinary practice are unrealizable in human medicine, 

 and finally that in man the serum is less active than in the 

 horse. When examined none of these objections hold good. 

 The numerous unsuccessful cases depend on the conditions of 

 tetanus intoxication and its neutralization ; there is not one of 



