GENERAL SURGERY
M. VASELIN
1887
Annals of Surgery
Angers). At the last meeting of the French Congress of Surgery this was one of the four questions proposed for discussion. Of r7 cases observed by Vaselin, but one had recovered; of 22 cases collected in his neighborhood, but one had been cured; and that one had been treated by large doses of laudanum. There may be differ¬ ent species of tetanus, and he believes that there is one which is but a neurosis, curable by the method which he followed in the case of a child who sustained a fracture of
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... he thigh, and a deep wound of the popliteal region by falling into a machine. The knee was disarticu¬ lated and the fracture splinted; the patient was doing as well as could be desired when, after a stormy discussion with a visitor, the first symptoms of tetanus appeared; after 29)days the patient recovered, not only from the tetanus, but from the amputation and fracture. In this case the cause of the tetanus could not have been cold nor any modification of the atmosphere ; nor any irregularity nor laceration of the wound; there was no systemic poisoning, for the author injected the blood, sweat and the urine of the patient into animals without any effect. He believes that there was simply a nervous hyper-excitation, caused by the discussion which determined the attack of tetanus. Ac¬ cordingly, he treated the patient for a neurosis, first isolating him, and then administering chloral in large doses with two days after, in spite of the youth of the patient, injections of morphine until the cessation of the spasms. The patient recovered. When his right hand was severely wounded a year after, the tetanus did not reappear. He con¬ cludes that tetanus has a nervous origin, curable by laudanum, chloral and morphine. It is not subject to recurrence. M. Balestri (Genes) has thought, since 1882, that he has a remedy f2^8j
doi:10.1097/00000658-188701000-00044
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