TETANUS CURED BY ETHER. 
95 
sion and rigidity, remained but in a feeble degree. The muscles 
of the neck have all along maintained greater firmness than those 
of other parts of the body. 
Apprehending, as was remarked last evening, lest, when the 
effects of the ether should have passed away, the animal should 
relapse into his tetanic state, we decided on continuing the ether 
under the form of clyster. By so doing, we escaped the fears we 
had reason to entertain of asphyxia, from the imperfection of the 
ether apparatus we had used. 
June 18. — At four o’clock was given him six ounces of ether 
in a clyster. At the expiration of half an hour there came on a 
well-marked state of somnolency. The amelioration lasted all the 
evening. The motion of the jaws is grown quite free. The 
muscular system is in a moderate state of tension. The animal 
again ate about five pounds of hay with fair appetite. In the 
evening there came on a foetid diarrhoea. 
JUNE 14. — Still better. The diarrhoea is increased since last 
evening. The trismus is a little less. The patient eats from time 
to time the parcels of hay set before him. Fresh etherization is 
tried with the apparatus used before. In an hour and a half the 
somnolescence returned, accompanied by considerable retardation 
of respiration, but no falling down. To the drowsiness suc- 
ceeded a brisk exacerbation; a veritable tetanic paroxysm breaks 
out; the animal once more becomes unmanageable; it is with 
great trouble he is kept in his stall. Attributing part of these 
phenomena to the commencement of asphyxia, from the prolonged 
contact of the ethereal gas with the pulmonary surface, we dis- 
continued the inhalations, and in their place substituted ethereal 
clysters. Nine ounces of ether were immediately thrown into the 
rectum. In the evening the patient was sensibly better. 
June 15. — Continues better. There is less tension in the 
masseter as well as in all the other muscles. What, however, is 
the most remarkable, is the pliableness of the alee nasi . The 
countenance, also, is less contracted ; the eyes less glassy ; the 
breathing calmer ; the appetite improved, he having, in the course 
of the day, eaten half a ration of hay and corn. 
Renewed inhalations of ether for an hour and a half : the clys- 
ters having been suspended on account of diarrhoea, which is now 
more violent than it was last evening, and more offensive. A 
violent inflammation has set up around the margin of the anus and 
the lips of the vulva ; and the rectal mucous membrane likewise 
is intensely inflamed, the tegument of the perineum being in part 
infiltrated. This inflammation, caused by the ethereal clysters, 
has been relieved by antiphlogistics and anodynes, the excoriations 
exteriorly being kept sprinkled with absorbent powder. 
