Page:New observations on inoculation - Angelo Gatti.djvu/88

74 with some others which promised to be equally secure; to the end that if any one method was by experience found to answer better than the others, it might be adopted.

I had found, though the same preparation had used for several years was continued, yet that keeping the patients less in bed, and more exposed to the cool and open air, the disease was less severe; the variolous pustules were fewer in number, insomuch that they were very rarely blind: to say nothing, that at the end of the distemper they were less enfeebled. I determined to try, therefore, what medicines of different kinds, under the same regimen, would produce: besides, as lord Bacon suggests, Inveniendum est, quid natura faciat, vel ferat: It was proper also to be informed of what nature unassisted, not to say undisturbed, would do for herself This was not to be done, but where a number of persons of both sexes were inoculated at the same time and place, in the same manner, with the same variolous matter, and observing equally the same regimen. The only difference then was to consist in their medical treatment.

October 12, 1767, I directed thirty-one persons to be inoculated. Their ages, as well as those of the subsequent observations, were from six to eleven or twelve. Ten were girls, and twenty-one boys. They were all inoculated with variolous matter, taken in its ichorous or watery state, from a person who had the disease in what is called the natural way. Each had two slight punctures in the left arm, made Rh