LOCKJAW TREATMENT.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXII, Issue 4308, 24 August 1921, Page 4

LOCKJAW TREATMENT.

TRUTHS THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US. The recent death of the, King )f Greece from the bite of a monkey indicates the seriousness of wounds co which. foreign matter gains access, .and tetanus, or lockjaw, comes within this category'. It is an infective disease of wounds caused by the tetanus bacilus, says Major-General Sir David Bruce, who .in a- timely publication of the Research Defence Society on “The Prevention of Tetanus During the Great War, By the Use of Anti-tetanic Serum ” makes out a strong case for the employment of. the anti-tetanic serum in preventing the onset of the disease.

Tetanus, we are told, is one of the most dreadful diseases which has been produced in nature to torment mankind. No'one who has seen a severe case can ever it. The poor victim, thrown few minutes into the most violent spasms, bent backwards to such an extent that only his head and heels touch the bed, his teeth tightly clenched, unable to eat or drink, his face expressing the fiendisn torture he isundei’going, at last is mercifully released by death. The mere entrance of garden soil indo a scratch may produce tetanus, as may a gunshot wound.

The., incidence of cases of tetanus in September, 1914. .was 18 times as heavy as in the last month of the war. In November, 1914, there was a sudden fall in the number of. cases, and this was maintained, Sir David Bruce asserts emphatically that this reduction and its maintenance to the end of the war was due to'preventive inoculations with .the serum. His evidence is, convincing. The treatment was applied when the number of cases became alarming, and the results were immediately obvious. z

Bazy, In the “Comptes Rendus de I’Academie des Sciences,” writes . “Where surgeons perform systematic preventive injections, as I do myself, to all wounded at 'the moment of entry, the. incidence of te.tanus is 4.18 per 1000. Where this injection h only given to cases thought to be suspicious, the incidence is 12.79 per 1000. The incidence, therefore, is three times greater in the service where injections are only given to certain categories of wounded ;than i i those where it is given systematically ,to all wounded.

“On account of certain circumstances. in a batch of 200 wpunded, only 100 received a preventive injection. This series furnished, a single case of tetanus, and in this case tetanus began on the day of injection, so that one could not say >h ( at the injection had a chance to exercise any preventive action. One may, therefore, say the incidence was zero. In the second batch of 100, which presented wounds similar in nature to the previous batch, but received no injection, there were 18 cases of tetanus, that is to say, 18 per cent.” Unhappily, the serum cannot be so fully endorsed as a curative agent, i-e., as a remedy after the disease has taken hold ; although the claim that it can save life after the symptoms of tetanus have declared themselves is abundantly proved by animal experiment, The tetanus toxin or poison formed in the wound by the 'tetanus bacilli is absorbed, states our authority, by the motor nerve-endings in the adjacent muscles. It may also pass into the blood and lymph stream and be carried all oevr the body. Anti-toxin introduced into the body can neutralise or destroy any toxin it meets with in the blood or lymph, but as soon as the toxin has passed into a nerve it is safe’ from the anti-toxin, which cannot follow it into the nervous tissues. If, then, we are told, a j

fatal amount of poison has been taken up by the motor nerves, and is travelling towards the nervous centres before the serum treatment* has bee a begun, then no amount of anti-toxia will save the patient. But if, on the other hand, less than a fatal amount has been absorbed by .the nerves, <he anti-toxin may neutralise the free toxin in the blood and lymph and so prevent it adding to the mischief. In any case .the treatment may lengthen the incubation period and thus entirely change the course of the disease from the extremely rapid and acute form to a slower and more chronic form, with less severe symptoms and a tendency to recovery instead of to death.—“ Popular Science Siftings.”