Page:The New Method of Inoculating for the Small-Pox - Benjamin Rush.djvu/9

 I. there were great difficulties in the choice of the subjects for Inoculation. But experience teaches us that it may be practised in every stage of life, and in almost every condition of the human body. In infancy the periods before and after dentition are to be preferred. But we seldom see any great inconveniencies from submitting to the general necessity of inoculating children between the ages of three months and two years. Indeed we often see children cut three or four teeth during the preparation and eruptive fever, without the least addition being made to any of the troublesome symptoms which accompany the small-pox. There is one inconvenience attending the choice of the first months of infancy for inoculating, and that is, the matter often fails of producing the disorder in such young subjects. I have frequently failed in two or three attempts to communicate the disorder to children under four months old with the same matter that has succeeded in a dozen other patients inoculated at the same time. When the inoculation succeeds in such tender subjects, they generally have less fever, and fewer pustules, than are common in any future period of life.

a physician would prefer a patient in good health to any other as a ject