ON TETANUS. 
365 
animal, is that of administering the nutriment without elevating 
the head of the horse, and inflicting on the animal the extreme 
torture which used from this cause to accompany the act of drench¬ 
ing. Let the jaw be ever so closely clenched, we have but to 
introduce the pipe between the tushes and the grinders, and carry 
it pretty far back into the mouth, and we may introduce into the 
stomach any quantity of fluid we please. Thick gruel, not more 
than a quart at a time, may also be thrown up as an injection. 
In this small quantity it will usually be retained and absorbed. 
Food continued .—The most important time, however, for at¬ 
tending to the food is during those remissions, occasionally ob¬ 
served in cases that, after all, terminate badly, but more marked 
when the disease is beginning to give way. The horse may be, 
and generally is, utterly incapable to take up the smallest portion 
of food ; but if, in these intervals of remission, a little bit is con¬ 
veyed between his grinders, he will set to work to masticate, or, 
at least, he will try to do so. Before it is a quarter chewed it 
will, perhaps, drop from his mouth, and not one morsel will he 
probably be able to swallow ; but what then?—he has been do¬ 
ing good, or you have been enabling him to do so—he has been 
putting the muscles of his jaws to their proper use. He has 
been breaking the chain of spasmodic action, and it will not re¬ 
turn again so violent as before. On the following day he will do 
a little better; and, on the next day, perhaps, he may be able 
—no, not to gather a morsel, but—to swallow one out of a dozen 
that have been thus conveyed between his grinders. These are 
minutiae of practice which the young man thinks not of, but ex¬ 
perience teaches us their value; and 1 am sure that I can truly 
attribute the successful termination of more cases than one to 
this careful nursing of the patient. 
When the horse is getting decidedly better, and the weather 
will permit of it, there can be no better practice than to turn him 
out for a few hours in the middle of the day. His toddling 
about will regain him the use of his limbs ; the attempt to stoop 
to graze will drive the spasm from his neck; the act of grazing 
will relax the muscles of the jaws, and no better food can he 
have than fresh grass. 
Attention to the Focus or Origin of the Disease .—I have not yet 
touched on this very important branch of the treatment of tetanus. 
True, the wdiole system of voluntary motion seems to be involved ; 
but it proceeded from some local affection. The fire kindled on 
some particular spot, where there is still probably a focus, a re¬ 
servoir of morbific action. We must carefully iiupiire into the 
history of the horse for ten or twenty days back. If he has 
been docked, or nicked, or castrated, these tilings will speak for 
themselves, lias he been lame in the feet?—has he lieen [nicked 
I 
