TETANUS. 187 
by hard work. The task extorted by the whip and spur of the 
most brutal sportsman is nothing to it. 
Favourable Symptoms. —About or a little before this time, 
there are sometimes evident remissions. The spasm does not 
quite subside, but its force is materially lessened, and the pulse 
becomes quieter. The jaw is not sufficiently relaxed to enable 
the animal to eat or to drink, or for advantage to be taken of the 
opportunity for the administration of medicine ; and the slightest 
motion, or disturbance, or fright, recalls the spasmodic action 
with all its violence. If the remission returns, and is a little 
lengthened, and, particularly if there is more relaxation of the 
lower jaw, hope will begin to spring up : but do not hail it too 
eagerly, and do not remit the slightest medical attention. If the 
horse should recover, it will be very slowly, and he will be left 
sadly weak, and a mere walking skeleton. 
The Fost-mortem Appearances. —You will perhaps expect that 
examination after death would throw considerable light on 
a disease like this; you will, however, generally speaking, be 
grievously disappointed here. The system which, nearly first of 
all, presents itself will be an exception to this remark. The mus¬ 
cular fibre will exhibit proof plain enough of the labour which 
has been exacted from it, and of its vital power being perfectly 
exhausted : the muscles will often appear as if they had been 
macerated; their texture will be softened, and they will be torn 
with tlie greatest ease. You will find much general inflamma¬ 
tion : the lungs will in the majority of the cases be highly in¬ 
flamed, for they have been labouring long and hardly to furnish 
arterial blood in sufficient quantity to answer to this great ex¬ 
penditure of animal power. Tlie stomach will exhibit patches of 
inflammation, but the intestines, in most cases, will present no 
diseased appearance at all. 
The I)rain and Spinal Chord. —You naturally examine the 
brain. You do not often find any thing that can well be con¬ 
nected with the production of such a disease. Sometimes you 
have slight injection of the membranes, and in a few cases 
chronic inflammation of them. The theca vertebralis will exhibit 
patches of inflammation—the medulla itself will often be darker, 
and more vascular:—in some cases, this has reached through the 
whole extent of the spinal chord; in others, that which was con- 
< tained in the dorsal portion of the canal was affected ; and in 
more numerous cases there was no morbid change that was 
worthy of record. One fact I am compelled to record, that al¬ 
though believing tetanus to be a disease of the motor column 
principally or solely, I never could detect any inflammation about 
the coats ol the motor nerves, or any peculiar aflection of that 
