Page:A Treatise upon the Small-Pox.pdf/52

24 they are denominated Confluent from the Face only, which is chiefly affected by this Disease: For if in several Parts of the Body many Pustules flow into one, while in the Face they are parted and divided, this is not the Confluent, but the middle Kind; and on the other Hand, if the Pimples run together in the Face, though they are ever so distinct in the Limbs and the Body, this is reckoned in the Class of the Confluent: And in this Kind also are found many Gradations, before we ascend to the most terrible and malignant of all. The least dangerous Sort of these is when the Eruptions appear on the third Day after the first Illness; for the longer they stay before they break out, as I have observed before, the milder and safer they are; for then Nature is allowed longer Time to digest the noxious Matter, and dispose it for Exclusion; whereas it is an Argument of the highest Putrefaction, when Nature, that is the active Principles of the Blood, are forced to attempt a too hasty Separation or Expulsion of the Matter as yet crude and unconcocted, to ease her self of the vast Oppression of the poisonous Ferment, under which she is ready to lye down and dye. Thus the mildest Sort of the Confluent, that approach the nearest in Nature to the distinct Sort, come nearest to them likewise in the Time of their Eruption, which is in the fourth Day after the first Attack, as in this Sort on the third. The