Page:New observations on inoculation - Angelo Gatti.djvu/54

40 least spot of them often brings on an universal inflammation of the whole.

The symptoms of the small-pox, when it is violent, indicate that the seat is in the stomach or lungs; and dissection constantly shews the cause of death to have been an eruption in these viscera, like that which appears outwardly.

An eruption and inflammation, though ever so slight, either in the lungs or stomach, must produce effects, which being combined with those of the virus, will in this first period render the: disorder inflammatory, which it could not otherwise have been. Accordingly, in the natural small-pox, so early as the second or third day of the fever, the pulse, heat, &c. indicate an internal inflammation, and the blood is fizy as it is in inflammations of the lungs. But in the artificial small-pox, as the local inflammation is always slight, especially if the insertion has been well performed, and as it does not affect a delicate organ essential to life, it may be considered as next to nothing; and consequently the fever, and other symptoms incident to this period, are only occasioned by the immediate and hidden working of the venom, without the intervention of other causes. Hence we observe, during this stage of inoculation, none of those inflammatory symptoms which seldom fail to show themselves in the natural disorder.

Rh