Page:The New Method of Inoculating for the Small-Pox - Benjamin Rush.djvu/10

 for inoculation, yet cases often occur in which it is necessary to communicate the small-pox while the body is affected with some other disorder. I can with pleasure inform you, that the small-pox is rendered so perfectly safe by inoculation, that there are few chronic diseases which should be considered as obstacles in the way of it. I have inoculated patients labouring under a tertian fever, obstructed viscera, the hooping cough, the hypochondriasis, the asthma, the itch, and other cutaneous disorders, and even pregnant women, with the same, and in some instances, with greater success than persons in perfect health. Doctor Cullen informs us that he has seen inoculation succeed in scrophulous patients. A physician in Jamaica informed me that he had inoculated Negroes with success in the worst stage of the yaws. To these facts I must add one more extraordinary than any that has been yet mentioned: Doctor Brown, my late colleague in the care of the military hospitals, informed me, that he had seen inoculation succeed in patients who were seized, after the infection was communicated, with the hospital fever. The preparation of the body should be accommodated to the disease which affects it. Some physicians have thought the small-pox, received in this way, was a remedy for other diseases, but my experience has not firmed