Page:New observations on inoculation - Angelo Gatti.djvu/61

Rh 5.If cold did really drive back the pustules, it would be an advantage in a disorder, where the danger arises from their number. Hence, in some cases, pustules are often seen to disappear soon after the eruption; and this phenomenon, when attended with no bad symptom, is looked upon by skilful physicians as a sign that the disorder is very slight.

6.What induces people to imagine that pustules which disappear do really strike in, and that the humor which was to have filled them, is driven back towards the internal parts, and brings on the terrible symptoms sometimes attending this disorder, and even death itself, is, that the vanishing of the pustules is often the consequence of a fatal turn of the distemper. But the effect is here mistaken for the cause. When life is immediately attacked by some internal enemy such as an eruption on the lungs or stomach, too great an inflammation of these parts, too copious a suppuration, a mortification, &c, nature, sinking under this attack, is unable to carry on the external eruption, and the pustules disappear of course. But the threatening symptoms always go before; and the dissection of the bodies after death shews that the causes, which brought it on, began long before the sinking of the pustules.

Rh