ON TETANUS. 
307 
White Hellebore. —We often experience the beneficial 
agency of hellebore in lessening the rapidity of the circulation, 
or allaying general irritability; and this seems to be effected by 
the direct power of hellebore on the common sensorium, and an 
increased determination of blood to that organ, producing, if I 
may dare to use the term, a benumbing effect on the sources 
of nervous influence, both animal and organic. I seem to have 
found what I wanted here ; but experience teaches me that I must 
at all times administer the hellebore in very cautious doses—that 
I must watch it almost every hour—and that if I go a little too far, 
I have coma, convulsions, death. This frightens me, where my 
only hope of success consists in outrageous doses, and those 
often repeated ; and the dangerous effects of which may be sud¬ 
den in their appearance, and bid defiance to all my attempts to 
arrest their progress. 
Opium. —In opium I have a sedative of acknowledged effect 
on every system, and with little, or, I may almost say, no nar¬ 
cotic power on the quadruped. If I have local inflammation— 
inflammation of the conjunctival membrane—a drop or two of 
the vinous tincture of opium introduced into the eye frequently 
acts as a charm. If I have inflammation of the mucous mem¬ 
brane of the intestines, whatever else I may give, I have recourse 
to opium as my main dependence. I find, by the cessation of 
pain and mucous "discharge, that it has soon relieved the 
irritation of the membrane generally; and, by the greater con¬ 
sistency of the fecal discharge, that the open mouths of the 
exhalent vessels have been quieted down to the natural exercise 
of their functions. It is an astringent, because it is a sedative: 
and I can administer this drug to almost any extent without dan¬ 
gerous narcotic effect being produced. Then to this I fly; and 
I find it my sheet-anchor in the treatment of tetanus. I give 
it in large doses : I must do so, for I have a formidable enemy 
to encounter; and I am encouraged to do so, for all that I can 
at any other time fear from it is, that it may a little overact its 
part, which it is scarcely possible for it to do here. 
To the smallest horse I should give a drachm of powdered 
opium, morning, noon, and night; I should increase the dose 
in proportion to the increased size of the animal, and to a 
large horse I should not scruple to give two drachms three times 
in the day. If it can by possibility be managed by means of a 
probang or flexible cane, it should be given in the form of ball. 
There is more in this than I can perhaps explain. I can give a 
larger dose of purgative medicine with safety in the form of 
drink than I can in that of ball. I can perhaps get it to act 
a little more speedily, but it does not act so powerfully, and that 
