TKTANUS. 
245 
early period of the disease, the horse had not, even amidst his 
extremity of suffering, forgotten his old propensities, and had 
neighed whenever a mare approached, and had endeavoured as 
well as he could to join her. M. Taffanel happened now to 
meet with a fellow practitioner, to whom he related the 
circumstances of the case. His friend told him that he had had 
an entire horse under treatment for tetanus under very similar 
circumstances, and that, all other means failing, he had castrated 
him, and cured him too. It was determined that this patient 
should submit to the operation, and perhaps under the circum¬ 
stances the most judicious mode of operating was adopted— 
namely, that of torsion and tearing of the chord. The horse 
could not be securely hobbled on account of his extreme irrita¬ 
bility, and therefore it happened that the chord of the left tes¬ 
ticle was not sufficiently twisted, and it bled for four hours, 
and eight pounds of blood were lost. During the operation, the 
horse uttered the most plaintive cries ; the muscles of the face 
and of the abdomen were even more violently contracted than 
before ; the breathing became much more laborious, and it 
seemed to be impossible that he could survive, but all this quieted 
down. On the second day, the tetanic spasm was so diminished 
that he could eat a little green meat; and on the fifteenth day 
after the operation, he was dismissed cured. This was applying 
the principle of counter-irritation with a vengeance: it belongs, 
however, to another part of my subject. 
Over-fatiguej exciting causes^ and sudden change of tempera¬ 
ture. — Our scanty records of veterinary matters contain nume¬ 
rous instances of tetanus following exertion brutally exacted 
beyond the animal’s natural strength, in the draught of heavy 
loads. Horses that have been matched against time have too 
frequently died tetanic a little while afterwards. Sudden 
exposure to cold, after being heated by exercise, has produced 
this dreadful state of nervous action, and especially if the horse 
has stood in a partial draught; but of all the causes of this nature, 
the dripping of cold water upon the loins has been the most 
fatal, with the exception, perhaps, of the animal’s drinking his fill 
of cold water when he was profusely perspiring after exercise. 
Diseases producing or followed hij Tetanus. — I might present 
you with a long list of these. There is scarcely a disease that 
has not been complicated with tetanic symptoms in some of its 
stages. Many have degenerated into, or have yielded to the 
overwhelming power of this dreadful spasm. Suppressed strangles 
have not unfref[uently been followed by tetanus ; and there is one 
case in which, although the tumour su])puratcd, the discharge 
was not so great as it ought to have been, and tetanus closely 
