TETANUS. 
387 
weeks later she was seized with tetanus, and on investigation, 
it was found that a horse affected with that disease had been 
in a stable opening into the yard where she fell. He also 
mentions another circumstance. In a small village, where 
tetanus was previously unknown, five cases appeared in eight¬ 
een months under quite different climatic conditions. Of 
these one had been taken to a hospital, after which two others 
in the same ward became affected with the disease. 
The oxogenous origin of the disease has been proven by 
Nicolaier, who produced the disease by injecting into the tis¬ 
sue of animals bacillus taken from earth. Rosenbach found 
the same bacillus in the pus of a patient suffering from trau¬ 
matic tetanus, and the identity of the bacillus of tetanus with 
Nicolaier’s bacillus of earth tetanus was demonstrated by 
Koch in 1887. 
The physical characters of bacillus tetanus, stained with 
fuchsin x 1,000, are those of an anasrobic micro-organism, 
which presents more than ordinary life, with a spore at the 
extremity having the appearance of a broken drum-stick. 
Kitasato, in speaking of the bacillus as to its function of repro¬ 
duction, says that the bacillus tetani produce spores in thirtv 
hours in culture kept at a temperature of the body. They pos¬ 
sess great resistance to heat, as they have been active after an 
exposure of one hour to 8o° C. of moist heat, but they are 
destroyed by placing them in a sterilizer heated to ioo° C. 
for five minutes. 
The bacillus has been found in different kinds of surface- 
soil, and in street dust. In man it has been found, in teta¬ 
nic patients, in the wound secretions, in the nerves leading 
from the seat of infection and in the spinal cord. 
CULTIVATIONS, INOCULATION EXPERIMENTS, ETC. 
It has been a question of dispute among pathologists as to 
the specific cause of the disease. The same question has been 
raised in connection with the pathogenic action of the bacillus 
tetani as with pus microbes, i. e. y is the disease of which it 
is the specific cause due to the presence of the microbes or 
the ptomaines which it elaborates in the tissue ? 
