of pointed at their
centre, and containing a little watery milky fluid. They next enlarge,
and become once more prominent at their centre as they fill more and
more with fluid, which becomes thicker, yellowish-white--looks like, and
indeed is, matter. Four or five days are occupied with this process;
the matter in the pocks then begins to dry, and scabs to form, which
gradually by the end of another week drop off, and leave the skin
spotted with red or even scarred if the pocks went deep enough to
destroy the skin, and to leave the indelible marks, the so-called
pitting of small-pox.

The danger of the disease is in childhood the nervous disorder at the
outset, and then the exhaustion produced by the so-called maturation of
the pocks when the thin watery fluid changes to the thicker matter, and
depresses the patient in the same way as he would be depressed by an
enormous abscess.

The first outbreak of the eruption is followed always by a most
remarkable abatement in the disturbance of the constitution, and for
three or four days, even though the eruption is abundant, the patient
may seem so well that it is almost impossible to realise the imminent
peril to which he will be exposed in a few days' time.

=Inoculation and Vaccination.=--The danger of small-pox is in direct
proportion to the abundance of the eruption; and the great advantage of
inoculation for the small-pox consisted in the much scantier eruption
which followed it, as compared with that which commonly took place in
the natural small-pox.

The same advantage in a greater degree is obtained by vaccination, even
in the exceptional instances in which it fails to render the person
altogether insusceptible to the disease.

The great advantage which inoculation secured was counterbalanced in
great measure by the fact that it always maintained small-pox rife
throughout the whole country, and that consequently all who either had
neglected inoculation, or young children on whom, on account of their
tender age, it had not yet been practised, were more than ever exposed
to constant risk of infection.

This very real danger led to the almost unanimous welcome which the
practice of vaccination received towards the end of the last century,
since it was hoped that by it not only would the risk attending
small-pox be lessened, and the disease when it did occur be even milder
in character than inoculated small-pox, but that small-pox itself would
eventually be extir