who are of mature age. The deacons have functions in the Eucharist and about the altar which point to an early date; they have also much administrative work of an important kind, and especial provisions are made for the care of the sick and the dead, and the burial of those who perish by shipwreck. One of the deacons is to be chosen as “ chief deacon ” (protodiaconus, i. 19, cf. i. 34), and is charged with the care of pilgrims. -There are no doorkeepers or singers, who begin to appear circ. A.D, 340. The honour given to confessors is very conspicuous, and points back to an early date. But remarkable above all is the position given to women. We have “ widows having precedence ” or presbyteresses, three in number, deaconesses, virgins, and widows who are in receipt of the alms of the Church; and the first-named occupy a place of very great dignity, which is almost unequalled elsewhere (excepting in the earlier form of the apocryphal and Montanistic Acts and Martyrdom of Matthew, where the relation of the 1rpeoBU'rt and deaconess corresponds with that of the Testament), and which was formally condemned by the Council of Laodicea in Phrygia.
What conclusion is to be drawn, then, as to the age and character of the Testament? MgrRahmani's view, that it is a work of the 2nd century, is universally discredited; nor has, Funk's contention found acceptance, that it and the Canons of Hippolytus are alike derived ultimately from the eighth book of the Apostolic Constitutions. Some scholars think that the Apocalypse at the beginning is pre-Nicene (A.D. 250-325), and that it originates from Asia Minor, probably from Montanistic circles. Harnack formerly contended that this was an independent work, upon which the Church Order had been grafted, and that as a whole it dated from circ. A.D. 400. But the unity of thought and atmosphere, is such as to show that the work is one whole (subject no doubt to a certain- amount .of redaction and interpolation), and that the apocalyptic part was composed as an introduction to the rest. As to the central portion (i. 19-ii. 24) it is a Church Order of the same kind as the Canons of Hippolytus (c. 220) and the Egyptian (c. 310) and Ethiopic (c. 335) Church Orders, standing nearer to the two latter than to the former, and especially to the Verona Latin Fragments, part iii. (c. 340), published in 1900 by Dr Hauler. The precise relation in which these documents stand to one another still remains in a measure doubtful, but it seems probable that they are based upon a lost Church Order, to which the Canons of Hippolytus stands nearest. [The Greek original of the Testamentum would seem to date from the middle of the 4th century, not long after 350. This is the view of T. Zahn and Dom Morin and also of Profs. Cooper and Maclean. It is possible that about 400 a later. editor added a few paragraphs]
Such redaction was indeed inevitable in the case of a work which has had a living history as part of acodex of-Church law. It may be discerned in the interpolations the prayers; possibly in the reference to the chief deacon, for elsewhere no single deacon is distinguished by name until the close of the 4th century; in the reference to the Epiphany, which is first heard of elsewhere at the beginning of the 4th century. The suggestion has been hazarded that this revision was due to the school of Apollinaris of Laodicea (died circ. A.D. 390).
Authorities.-'IgH. Ephr. Rahmani, Testamentum Damini nostri Jesu Christi (Moguntiae, x899); E. Hauler, Didascaliae'Apostolorum Fragmenta Ueranensia Latina (Lipsiae, 1900); A. Harnack in Sitzungsberichte der K. Preuss. Akad. der Wissenschaften, xlix. (Berlin, 1899): Bishop ]. Wordsworth in Church Quarterly Review (London, April 1900); and Revue Internationale de théologie (Bern, July 1900); R. B. Rackham in Indian Church Quarterly Review (Calcutta, janua and April 1901); F. X. Funk, Das Testament des Herrn und Ze verwandten Schriften (Mainz, 1901); Iamos Cooper and A. ]. Maclean, The Testament of Our Lord, an English translation, with introduction and notes (Edinburgh, 1902). Cf. also A. ]. Maclean, Recent Discoveries illustrating Early Christian Life and Worship (London, 1904).
TESTAMUR, Latin for "we testify ” or “certify ” (testari).
The name given in English universities to a certificate given to a
student signifying that he has passed an examination, so called
from the word with which the certificate begins.
TESTER (Fr, têtière, head-covering, from tête), anything
placed horizontally over the head, as the sound-board of a pulpit,
the fiat boards over an old-fashioned bed, &c.
TETANUS (from Gr. τείνω, I stretch, on account of the
tension of the fibres of the affected muscles), or Lockjaw, a
disease caused by the bacilli Tetani (see Parasitic Diseases). The home of these bacilli is the earth, and so it comes about that if a man is thrown off his bicycle and grazes his ungloved hand upon the road, or running without shoes cuts his foot, there is a considerable chance of the bacilli entering the wound and giving him lockjaw. It is popularly thought that wounds
in the region of the thumb are most often followed by the
disease, but this is not a fact. Wounds about the thumb are of
common occurrence, but they are not, in proportion, more often
the starting point of tetanus.
Acute traumatic tetanus is very deadly, and up to the present time nothing has been discovered to check or guide its almost certainly fatal course. It often picks out the young and vigorous as its victims—the athlete, for instance, who meets with some mishap in the field or on the road, the gardener who pricks his hand, the swimmer who cuts his foot, the wounded soldier on the field of battle. The violent muscular contractions are distressingly painful; and the brain remaining perfectly clear throughout, the unhappy individual feels that the vice-like gripping of his muscles is steadily exhausting him and bringing him down. The spasms of tetanus differ from those caused by the administration of strychnine in that the muscles are all the time hard from rigid contraction, the acute spasmodic attacks being superadded, as it were. In poisoning by strychnine the muscles are quite relaxed between the spasmodic attacks.
Tetanus may follow a mere prick or scratch or a severe surgical operation. It not seldom complicates burns, gunshot wounds and injuries caused by the untimely explosion of fireworks. It may be met with in the woman in child-bed or in the newly-born infant. But wherever it occurs it is due to the one cause—to the reception into some wounded surface of the specific germs.
In hot countries tetanus is more common and more acute than it is in temperate climes, and a case has been recorded in which a man in the West Indies cut his hand on a broken plate at dinner and was dead of tetanus before the day was out. It is easy to see that the germs are more likely to undergo virulent cultivation in warm earth than in cold. It was formerly the custom to speak of idiopathic tetanus—that is to say, of the disease occurring without any wound having been received. But modern teaching is to the effect that there must have been some wound, however slight, by which the germs found entrance. Rheumatic tetanus is as unreal a disease as that just mentioned. The germs themselves do not wander from the wound to multiply in the blood as in infecting diseases, but remaining at the wound elaborate a terribly poisonous substance (a toxin) which makes its way along the nerve-trunks to the spinal cord. Even prompt amputation, however, is likely to prove ineffectual as regards cure, for the germs in the wound have in this growth set free so virulent a poison (toxin) that the nerves of the voluntary muscles all over the body are hopelessly under its influence.
The first symptom of the disease is discomfort in the back of the neck; the man waking up in the morning, for instance, complains of “stiff neck” and of obscure pains, and wonders if he has been lying in a draught. Then the muscles of the jaw and of the face become affected, there being a difficulty in opening the mouth, and the corners of the mouth are drawn downwards and backwards, and fixed in that position (risus sardonicus). The jaw is so firmly set that it is impossible to pass anything between the teeth. All food, therefore, has to be fluid, and being poured into the pouch of the cheek, finds its way into the mouth by the serviceable gap which exists behind the wisdom-teeth. Soon, however, a difficulty in swallowing comes on because of the muscles of the throat being involved. The muscles of the abdomen becoming contracted are rigidly fixed, and on laying the hand upon the front of the abdomen
