TETANUS IN INFANTS
Trismus nascentium, more commonly known as neonatal tetanus or tetanus in infants, is an often-fatal disease which includes symptoms such as lock-jaw, crying, and the inability to suck. Dr. James Marion Sims, who had been a leading physician in gynecological medicine, had been exposed to many cases and attempted to treat this disease in the late 1830s to 1840s, as the cause of the disease was still undiscovered. After a fatal case, he had concluded that trismus nascentium was a result of an infant having too much pressure at the base of the brain during birth. As more cases arose, it was evident that the treatment he provided differed between races. Dr. Sims would limit his methods when attempting to cure neonatal tetanus in the child of a white couple to simply changing its position to try and relieve pressure from the base of the skull. When presented with enslaved infants with neonatal tetanus symptoms, he was more likely to experiment with surgical techniques.
When the babies of enslaved women Ann and Frances were presented to him with the condition, Dr. Sims had decided to keep the infants at his residence to watch them more carefully. He proceeded to use a shoemaker’s awl, a pointed instrument used to make small holes in leather and wood, to puncture the newborn infants’ scalps at the point where two skull bones fused in attempts to pry out the edges of the parietal bone and relieve the pressure at the base of the brain over the span of a few days. When this method didn’t work, he blamed it on the mother, Ann and her nurse, for making the infants case more severe than it should’ve been. When Frances’ child passed away after the same treatment, Dr. Sims performed an autopsy to further investigate the cause of the disease. He attempted this technique on many enslaved infants and had a very high mortality rate. Dr. Sims never faced any repercussions for this experimentation on enslaved infants. This disease is now known to be a form of tetanus caused by environmental exposure to the bacterium Clostridium tetani, typically at the site of a newborn’s unhealed umbilical cord. With medical advancements, neonatal tetanus is preventable with a vaccine and hygienic care.