Page:The New Method of Inoculating for the Small-Pox - Benjamin Rush.djvu/21

 has been afterwards taken in the natural way. In these cases I would suppose the variolous matter produced only a topical or cuticular disorder. We see something analogous to this in nurses who attend patients in the small-pox. But further, this topical or cuticular infection may be produced by art in persons who have had the small-pox in the natural way. Some years ago I made a puncture on my left hand with a lancet moistened with variolous matter. On the eighth day an inflammation appeared on the place, accompanied with an efflorescence in the neighbourhood of it, which extended about two inches in every direction from the spot where the puncture was made. On the eleventh day I was surprised to find two pocks (if I may venture to call them such) the one on the outside of the fourth finger of my left hand, and the other on my forehead. They remained there for several days, but without filling with matter, and then dropped off rather in the form of a soft wart than of a common scab. Doctor Way, of Wilmington, repeated the same experiment upon himself, but with an issue to his curiosity more extraordinary than that I have just now related. On the eighth day after he had made a puncture on his hand, a pock appeared on the spot which in the usual time filled with matter, from which he inoculated several children