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EDITOR! A Lj 
same result being attained when horses have been used as subjects 
of experiment as when the test was made with other animals. 
Nieolaier, in 1884, reached the conclusion, after long re¬ 
search, that the tetanic symptoms were due to the action of an 
“ anaerobic bacillus, linear-rod in form, with one extremity pre¬ 
senting, first, a little enlargement which colored very easily, and 
at a later period a spore which colored very slightly only.” But 
neither Nieolaier nor any of the investigators who followed him, 
ever succeeded in obtaining pure cultures of that bacillus. And 
yet, in all the microscopic examinations subsequently made, the 
same bacillus was found in various quantities in all the structures 
taken from tetanic patients, viz., in the pus found at the points of 
inoculation, in the skin, and the infiltrated tissues surrounding it. 
Director Nocard, in a new series of experiments made with the 
pus which covered and had dried on wooden clamps used for cas¬ 
tration and taken from horses that had died from lock-jaw, has 
reached the same conclusion, and has found in the subjects which 
died during his experiments, that the bacillus of Nieolaier was 
always present, but only remained localized at or near the seat of 
the wound which formed the starting point of the disease. The 
nervous structures, the blood of the general circulation, the lymph 
and splenic pulp, are not generally virulent. 
The explanation of the special action of this bacillus, so lim¬ 
ited in number, probably resides in the theory, now in dispute, of 
the general action of microbes which are supposed to secrete toxic 
products, called ptomaines , which are true alkaloids, endowed 
with excessively powerful toxic properties, and which seem to 
have been exposed by Brieger, of Berlin, who found four of them 
in cultures made upon sterilized meat, viz., tetanine, tetanotox- 
ine, spermotoxine, and toxine. 
In giving his conclusions from his experiments, Director 
Nocard says: “They prove once more the infectious nature of 
tetanus, its inscontability, and the long resistance of the contagium 
to all natural causes of its destruction. 
“ They throw a great light on the pathogeny of the epidemics 
of lock-jaw following castration. They prove that these epidem¬ 
ics are the involuntary act cf the operator who unconsciously car¬ 
ries the germ with him to distribute to his patients. 
