BMJ 2003;326:117-118 ( 18 January )

Editorials

Preventing and treating tetanus

The challenge continues in the face of neglect and lack of research

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

One hundred and twenty years ago, the BMJ contained the following report: "Death from tetanus induced by hypodermic injection. An inquest was held by the coroner for the city of Dublin last week on the body of a governess, aged fifty-six years, [who] used to inject morphia herself subcutaneously, for the relief of neuralgia arising from bad teeth . . . Dr Austin Meldon was of the opinion that the cause of tetanus must have been the injury of some nerve by the needle."1

In fact, the governess's tetanus probably resulted from chronic dental infection or using a dirty needle, not the nerve injury the doctor supposed. Six years after this report, Arthur Nicolaier showed that tetanus resulted from contamination of wounds with soil bacilli, which, he correctly deduced, produced a "strychnine-like" toxin responsible for the disease.2

More than a century later much more is known about the tetanus toxin; its deoxyribonucleic acid . . . [Full text of this article]
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BMJ 2003 326: 0. [Full Text] [PDF]

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