Cross-examined by Mr. Serjeant Shee: Irritation of the spinal cord or of the nerves proceeding to it might produce tetanus.
Do you agree with the opinion of Dr. Webster, in his lectures on the Principles and Practice of Physic, that in four cases out of five the disease begins with lockjaw?—I do.
Do you agree with Dr. Watson that all the symptoms of tetanic convulsions may arise from causes so slight as these;—the sticking of a fish-bone in the fauces, the air caused by a musket-shot, the stroke of a whip-lash under the eye, leaving the skin unbroken, the cutting of a corn, the biting of the finger by a favourite sparrow, the blow of a stick on the neck, the insertion of a seton, the extraction of a tooth, the injection of an hydrocele, and the operation of cutting?—Excepting the percussion of the air from a musketball, I think that all these causes may produce the symptoms referred to.
Do you remember reading of a case which occurred at Edinburgh, in which a negro servant lacerated his thumb by the fracture of a china dish, and was instantly, while the guests were at dinner, seized with tetanus?
The Attorney-General, interposing before the witness replied: I have taken some pains to ascertain what that case is, and where it is got from.
Cross-examination continued; Could traumatic tetanus occur within so short a time as a quarter of an hour after the reception of an injury?—I know of no well-authenticated instance of the kind.
Did you inquire into this case which is mentioned in your own treatise—“A negro having scratched his thumb with a piece of broken china, was seized with tetanus, and in a quarter of an hour after this he was dead?”—I referred to authority as far as I could, but I did not find any reference to it except in Cyclopædias. When I wrote that book I was a young man 22 years of age. I have maturer judgment and greater experience now.
You say that no case of idiopathic tetanus has come under your notice?—None.
I dare say you will tell us that such cases are not so likely to come to the hospital as those of a wound ending in traumatic tetanus; they would more likely, in the first instance, to come under the notice of a physician than that of a surgeon?—Certainly.
By Lord Campbell: I have read of cases of idiopathic tetanus in this country.