S 6 
ON TETANUS. 
to enlarge in proportion to the injury sustained, constitutes a 
frequent exciting cause of tetanus. 
It is my humble opinion, and I declare it fearlessly, that in all 
mechanical injuries, common and uncommon (although I am a 
staunch advocate for strict antiphlogistic measures), a moderate 
tumefaction towards the surface, instead of being repressed and 
regarded as the enemy, should be hailed as a liberator. 
There is a curious fact, which all must have observed, that 
where tetanus has supervened upon violent lameness from a recent 
injury, the lameness has sometimes almost disappeared upon the 
manifestation of the tetanic symptoms. 
The predisposition in the individual to become affected with te¬ 
tanus is a collateral circumstance not to be lost sight of in this 
discussion. There is a certain description of horse not exclu¬ 
sively of the blood kind, but generally of high pretensions in that 
respect, with hard prominent muscles, full eye, ears erect, tail 
well set on, a vivid intelligent countenance, and remarkably ener¬ 
getic both in and out of the stable, which is peculiarly suscepti¬ 
ble of tetanus. In fact, the reverse sort, I mean the one of 
mean conformation, flabby muscles, tail low, ears lopped, with a 
large fleshy head and an arrant slug in the bargain, I have yet to 
see labouring under this disease. Horses of this inferior grade, 
however, melt away, and are easily enough destroyed by pneu¬ 
monia ; but I repeat, they are not good enough to be the subjects 
of tetanus. 
I would define tetanus, when occasioned by a local injury, to 
be a disease of the brain and nerves , accompanied with rigidity of 
most of the voluntary muscles throughout the svstem, originating 
in the part injured by a sudden inauspicious metastasis of the in¬ 
flammation from the organic vascular connecting tissue to the 
minute nervous fibrils themselves, and transmitted by them to the 
spinal marrow, and from thence to the sensorium. 
This theory is also strengthened bv certain phenomena which 
I have occasionally observed to have immediately preceded some 
cases of tetanus symptomatic of apparently trifling injuries ; for 
instance, a graze of the shank-bone or skin of a hind leg just be¬ 
low the hock joint about an inch and a half in length, but the 
joint not involved in the injury, as evidenced by little or no lame¬ 
ness accompanying the accident. The usual antiphlogistic treat¬ 
ment adopted, poultices, quietude. See. till about the fourth or 
fifth day, when the wound was found covered with healthy pus, 
accompanied with what I would designate a desirable or suitable 
tumefaction of the leg below the hock, and descending in a favour¬ 
able manner towards the fetlock; no lameness whatever being 
