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A painful and usually fatal disease, resulting generally from a wound, and having as its principal symptom persistent spasm of the voluntary muscles. When the muscles of the lower jaw are affected, it is called locked-jaw, or lickjaw, and it takes various names from the various incurvations of the body resulting from t…

t is highly poisonous. It is used to produce contraction of the pupil of the eye; also in tetanus, neuralgia, and rheumatic diseases; -- called also ordeal bean, being used by the negroes in trials for witchcraft.

A term sometimes applied to the effects (tetanus) produced in the muscles of the limbs, when a current of electricity is passed along the spinal cord or nerves.

nic spasm; -- applied generically to denote any disease characterized by tonic spasms, as tetanus, trismus, etc.

A contraction of the muscles of the jaw by which its motion is suspended; a variety of tetanus.

tretching (Med.), the operation of stretching a nerve in order to remedy diseases such as tetanus, which are supposed to be influenced by the condition of the nerve or its connections.

A species of tetanus, in which the body is curved laterally. Quain. Dunglison.

Of or pertaining to tetanus; having the character of tetanus; as, a tetanic state; tetanic contraction. This condition of muscle, this fusion of a number of simple spasms into an apparently smooth, continuous effort, is known as tetanus, or tetanic contraction. Foster.

broth through the agency of a peculiar microbe from the wound of a person who has died of tetanus; -- so called because it produces tetanus as one of its prominent effects.

The production or condition of tetanus.

To throw, as a muscle, into a state of permanent contraction; to cause tetanus in. See Tetanus, n., 2.

Resembling tetanus.

A morbid condition resembling tetanus, but distinguished from it by being less severe and having intermittent spasms.

Produced by wounds; as, traumatic tetanus. -- n.