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DISTORTION OF THE NECK. 
III.—DISTORTION OF THE NECK (TORTICOLLIS, 
CAPUT OBSTIPUM). 
The collective term torticollis, or caput obstipum, has been used in 
human medicine since olden times to describe many different conditions, 
which, on careful examination, have nothing in common with that now 
under consideration. In animals, distortion of the neck sometimes 
occurs, but the precise anatomical changes on which the abnormality 
depends are not recognised. On this account, while adopting the above 
designation, we shall endeavour to point out the nature of the more 
frequent of these curvings or distortions. 
(1) Cramp or contraction of the muscles of the neck occurs both in 
men and animals. In men the most frequently affected muscle is the 
sterno-cleido-mastoideus ; its shortening is often congenital, or develops 
through cicatrisation after birth. Such conditions have not been observed 
in animals. But Uebele records that an eight days foal showed at short 
intervals attacks of cramp in the left cervical muscles, drawing the head 
to the left; when not supported, it fell; the condition disappeared in 
fourteen days. Moller has repeatedly seen temporary displacement of 
the head and neck in horses, consequent on rheumatic affections of the 
above-named and other muscles. These abnormalities were accompanied 
by a lameness, most marked when the limb was being lifted. In dogs 
similar rheumatic contractions in the muscles of the neck also occur, 
usually on both sides; can be recognised by local pain and swelling, and 
may exist only for a few hours. In pugs, in which it is common, such 
attacks often recur. 
(2) Paralysis of the muscles of the neck. Whilst the diseased conditions 
causing the above-named distortions are to be sought on the concave side 
of the curvature of the neck, the cause of paralytic torticollis exists on 
the convex side, as may be seen in dogs and rabbits during the course of 
diseases of the middle ear. In the German Army Reports a horse is 
mentioned in which paralysis of the muscles and production of torticollis 
lesulted fioin a carcinomatous growth on the petrous temporal bone. 
Torticollis appears in horses as an accompaniment of the general 
paralysis of meningitis cerebralis, and in diseases of the medulla 
oblongata and medulla spinalis in the neck. Wilden speaks of a horse 
which showed torticollis during an acute brain attack, but recovered 
as the ceiebial symptoms disappeared. Leisering saw a dog which 
suffered fiom toiticolhs, and simultaneously from hemiplegia and paralysis 
of the ear and eye, with softening of the pons varolii, medulla oblongata, 
and cerebellum. In birds—hens and ducks—Moller has often seen the 
head bent in a semicircle (so that the beak was turned backwards) in 
