an alterative for
ten days before inoculation, and till the eruptive fever commences, is said
with certainty to render the disease mild by the same author. Exper. on
Mercury by Van Woensel, translated by Dr. Fowle, Salisbury.

_Variola inoculata._ The world is much indebted to the great discoverer of
the good effects of inoculation, whose name is unknown; and our own country
to Lady Wortley Montague for its introduction into this part of Europe. By
inserting the variolous contagion into the arm, it is not received by the
tonsils, as generally happens, I suppose, in the natural small-pox; whence
there is no dangerous swelling of the throat, and as the pustules are
generally few and distinct, there is seldom any secondary fever; whence
those two sources of danger are precluded; hence when the throat in
inoculated small-pox is much inflamed and swelled, there is reason to
believe, that the disease had been previously taken by the tonsils in the
natural way.--Which also, I suppose, has generally happened, where the
confluent kind of small-pox has occurred on inoculation.

I have known two instances, and have heard of others, where the natural
small-pox began fourteen days after the contagion had been received; one of
these instances was of a countryman, who went to a market town many miles
from his home, where he saw a person in the small-pox, and on returning the
fever commenced that day fortnight: the other was of a child, whom the
ignorant mother carried to another child ill of the small-pox, on purpose
to communicate the disease to it; and the variolous fever began on the
fourteenth day from that time. So that in both these cases fever commenced
in half a lunation after the contagion was received. In the inoculated
small-pox the fever generally commences on the seventh day, or after a
quarter of a lunation; and on this circumstance probably depends the
greater mildness of the latter. The reason of which is difficult to
comprehend; but supposing the facts to be generally as above related, the
slower progress of the contagion indicates a greater inirritability of the
system, and in consequence a tendency to malignant rather than to
inflammatory fever. This difference of the time between the reception of
the infection and the fever in the natural and artificial small-pox may
nevertheless depend on its being inserted into a different series of
vessels; or to some unknown effect of lunar periods. It is a subject of
great cur