ON TETANUS. 
303 
establish in your minds—is to subdue inflammatory action by 
the promptest and most efficient means,—depletion. I speak of 
no specific quantity to be taken away; but I give you an unerr- 
ing guide,—the pulse. While that remains firm, bleed on, for ' 
you are attacking the disease, and not in the slightest degree 
hazarding the permanent strength of the patient. 
I am fully aware that if I was advocating this mode of treat¬ 
ing tetanus in the human subject, I should have the opinion of 
some excellent pathological writers decidedly against me ; and 
as it is, 1 know that I am opposed to some, but not many, good 
veterinary practitioners. Perhaps I should say, even then, that 
the objection to venesection has been oftener supported by the 
mere ipse dixit of the author, than by any appeal to fact, or even 
to sound pathological reasoning; and I should repeat, that I 
could not act on a sounder pathological principle, than to en¬ 
deavour to withdraw as much as I could of that which I have 
described to be the life of both the systems involved—that to the 
presence of which the one owes its capability of acting, and the 
other its power of being acted upon—the menstruum, by the 
interposition of which, if I may dare say so, the different elec¬ 
tricities of the two substances are developed, and the galvanic 
effect produced. But I am a mere veterinary surgeon, addressing 
veterinary pupils. I am describing the diseases of quadrupeds, 
and the proper medical treatment of them; and I must not, will not 
be deterred from following my own course, either by the somewhat 
unfounded prejudices, or the soundest inductions, of human 
practitioners, or even the most overwhelming accumulation of 
facts as it regards the human being. 
A Case stated .—About four years ago I saw, 1 trust for the 
credit of human nature, a very rare case of tetanus. A cabman, 
who had been seen driving his horse about town from an early 
to a late period of the day, came not back to the stables at the 
appointed hour. The night passed, and he came not; but in 
the course of the following day the cab-master received intelli¬ 
gence that his horse, looking like a dog-horse, had been seen at 
the door of a public-house thirty miles from home. He imme¬ 
diately despatched one of his men with a constable by coach in 
that direction, with peremptory orders, wherever they found him, 
and whatever might be the state of the poor animal, to put the 
fellow into the cab, and to make the best of their way home, in 
order that, as the sessions were just commencing, he might have 
the pleasure of punishing the scoundrel without delay. They 
found him early in the morning of the second day. They 
ascertained that he had been driving in every direction about 
the country ; that the horse had not been taken out of the cab ; 
