Page:A Treatise upon the Small-Pox.pdf/49

Rh Degrees to Beings of the greatest Perfection, which Degrees are diversified by such nice Limitations, that it is difficult to determine where one Kind ends, and another begins; so she proceeds in like Manner, in the Unravelling and Dissolution of the Bodies of Men by Distempers and Diseases, which is not more remarkable in any Instance, than in this of the Small-Pox. The first Sort which I have mentioned is called Distinct; but even in this are found many different Steps or Gradations, as I have suggested above; before you arrive at the worst of this Sort, some consisting of very few Pustules, some of more, and that in various Degrees till you come to the highest; and when you are gotten thither, you do not presently step into the Confluent or Flux Kind, as some have asserted, who make but two Sorts of Small-Pox, the Distinct, and Confluent. For Nature, according to her Custom, does not proceed so fast and hasty; but before it arises to the Confluent Species, it produces a middle Sort between both, that is, when in some parts of the Face and Body the Pustules are Distinct, and in others Confluent; and sometimes it happens that while all in the Face are Distinct, many in the Body shall flow together in Patches, like a redish scorbutick Tetter. If these confluent Patches appear at the Beginning, it is an Argument of an ill-conditioned Distemper, but if they run together and break in upon one another only at the latter End, when the Boils ripen,