370 MR. youatt’s veterinary lectures. 
the part principally attacked: but the chief dependence must 
be placed on copious bleeding at first; a recurrence to it, if the 
spasm becomes yet more violent, or fever appears ; and, as a 
powerful auxiliary, the joint influence of the sedative and purpa- 
tive medicine. 
TETANUS IN THE SHEEP. 
Of all our domesticated animals, the sheep seems to suffer 
most from this disease. Thousands of ewes after lambing, and 
tens of thousands of lambs lately dropped, are lost every winter, 
by careless and unfeeling agriculturists. It is not a great deal 
of attention that these poor beasts require: a linney or shed, 
a few clumps of trees, or even a thick hedge, to break a 
little the force of the wind, would render them in a manner 
comfortable, and certainly would remove very much of the 
danger : but when they are left altogether unprotected, nothing 
is more common than, after a cold night, to find some of the 
ewes, and more of the lambs, dying or dead ; every limb being 
drawn together, spasmed, stiffened by the cold. In travelling 
over some of the open parts of the country early on a winter’s 
morning, and in the space of twenty or thirty miles, I have 
seen more than as many sheep and lambs dying or dead. 
This happens again occasionally about weaning time, and the 
old shepherds pretend to tell what lambs will fall victims to it 
after castration. If, when the operator is sawing through the 
cord with his blunt knife, or gnawing it asunder with his teeth, 
the jaws of the little animal are strongly and spasmodically 
clenched, he says that that lamb is in danger of locked jaw ; 
and, in order to prevent its occurrence, he thrusts his thumb 
into the mouth of the patient, and forcibly separates the jaws. 
There is, notwithstanding the sarcasm of Hurtrel D’Arboval, 
much good sense in this ; the spasm is interrupted, and the 
charm is broken, and the disposition to this excess of muscular 
action is got rid of before it has had time to establish itself ge¬ 
nerally. Rams are particularly subject to tetanus after castration, 
and especially, it is said, when the operation by torsion (bis- 
tournage) is improperly performed. 
Symptoms .—Tetanus generally commences in the sheep, with 
singular involuntary spasmodic motion of the head, and some or 
all of the extremities. To this succeeds a peculiar stifi’ness of 
the greater part or the whole of the frame : the neck is protrud¬ 
ed, and the head bent back, and forcibly retained in that 
bended form : one leg is drawn up, and fixed in an unnatural 
condition. The rigidness occasionally relaxes, and gives way to 
violent convulsions of the head, neck, and extremities, followed 
again by fixidity of them and of the whole frame. The disease 
