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The Reaction of "Tetanus-Sensitive" and "Tetanus-Resistant" Animals to the Injection of Tetanal Toxin into the Spinal Cord¹

From the Department of Surgery, The Johns Hopkins Medical School, Baltimore, Md.

Abstract

In 1938 Firor and Jonas (1) produced pure tactile-reflex motor tetanus in dogs by injecting tetanal toxin directly into the motor area of the lumbar cord. Subsequently Firor and Lamont (2) reported certain observations that led to the hypothesis of the alteration of tetanal toxin within the spinal cord into a new lethal agent.² Recently Firor, Lamont, and Shumacker (8) in an effort to elucidate the cause of death in tetanus, have described further experiments on the reaction of animals to the introduction of toxin into the cord. In this investigation tactile-reflex motor tetanus was produced in cats, rabbits, guinea-pigs, and monkeys as well as in dogs. It is the purpose of the present paper to report certain differences in the reaction of three species to tetanal toxin within the spinal cord.

The animals used were monkeys (Macacus rhesus), which are sensitive to the toxin of Clostridium tetani, dogs, which are relatively resistant to the toxin, and cats, which are even more resistant.

Footnotes

¹ Aided in part by a grant from the John and Mary R. Markle Fund.

² About 40 years previously Courmont and Doyon had suggested that the convulsions of tetanus might be due to action of a strychnine-like body resulting from alteration of tetanal toxin in the central nervous system. They did not postulate the lethal action of this altered product. In 1930, Friedmann and Elkeles (4), without mentioning the above theory, made the suggestion that tetanal toxin might undergo alteration in the central nervous system in a paper dealing with diphtherial toxin and containing no experimental data whatsoever to substantiate the idea. More recently Friedmann and his co-workers (5, 6) postulated the alteration of tetanal toxin into a new substance within muscle-tissue—an idea expressed many years earlier by Pohl, according to his assistant, Zupnik (7).