Page:New observations on inoculation - Angelo Gatti.djvu/52

38 small inflammatory tumor. When there is a large crop, and the whole body is covered with them, their inflammation and suppuration must of course bring on a fever, with all the symptoms incident to inflammatory disorders. These would equally take place, were a patient's body covered with such a breaking-out, though of another nature, and from a different cause.

When the pustules are few, the inflammation and suppuration have very little effect, when there are none at all, this last period of inoculation does not exist, and the disorder ends with the eruptive fever.

The description of these four periods plainly shews the progress of nature in inoculation. The matter applied by insertion produces the small-pox upon the spot; this local eruption then acts upon the whole body, and brings on the general disorder.

The animal system is by no means affected in the two first stages of inoculation; and therefore no alteration need be made in the patient's usual way of living, and no treatment is requisite during that time. But in the two last periods, the patient is really ill, and must conform to such rules as may lessen his disorder.

But though these last periods constitute what is called the disease of the small-pox, that appellation really takes in two disorders, distinct from each other, as well in their nature and Rh