Si

138 OF THE CHICKEN AND .WINE-POX.

performed at a time when they are most healthy. Accidental dis-ease should always be removed before inoculation.

It is generally thought necessary to regulate the diet for sometime before the disease be communicated. In children, however,great alteration in diet is seldom necessary, their food being commonly of the most simple and wholesome kind, as milk, water-pap,weak broths, bread, light puddings, mild roots, and white meats.

But children who have been accustomed to a richer diet, who areof a gross habit, or abound with bad humours, ought to be putupon a spare diet before they are inoculated. Their iood should beof a light cooling nature, and their drink whey, butter-milk, &c.

We would recommend no other medicinal preparation but two orthree mild purges, which ought to be suited to the age and strengthof the patient. The success of inoculators does not depend somuch on the preparation of their patients, as on their managementJ them while under the disease. Theii constant care is to keepthem cool, and their bodies gently open, by which means the feveris kept low, and the eruption greatly lessened. The danger is seldomgreat when the pustules are few; and their number is generally inproportion to the fever which precedes and attends the eruption.Hence the chief secret of inoculation consists in regulating the erup-tive fever, which generally may be kept sufficiently low by the me-thods mentioned above.

The regimen during the disease is in all respects the same as underthe natural small-pox. The patient must be kept cool, his dietshould be light, and his drink weak and diluting, &c. Should anybad symptoms appear, which is seldom the case, they must betreated in the same way as directed in the natural small-pox. Purg-ing is not less necessary afer the small-pox by inoculation than inthe natural way, and ought by no means to be neglected.In . very stage of the small-pox, animal food should be avoided.

The CHICKEN-POX and SWINE-POX differ so little from eachother, and are attended with so little danger, or difficulty of cure,that it is not necessary to treat of them separately. The only ma-terial distinction between these two diseases is, that the pimples orpustules of the latter are frequently of a larger size than the former,but this is not always the case. The chicken-pox, like the small-pox, seems to depend upon a specific contagion. Persons who haveliad the. small pox niErv have the chicken-pox; but those who havehad the chicken-pox are as rarely affected again by it as by thesmall-pox; but to those persons who never had the chicken-pox, itis as infectious a distemper as the small-pox.The svmptoms which generally precede the chicken-pox resemblethose of the small-pox, but they are much less violent and ot shorterduration. The eruption is frequently preceded by chilliness, suc-ceeded by flushing heats: thirst, restlessness, a quick pulse, pains Hithe head and back, loss of appetite, and aversion to exercise, arefollowed by the appeal ancc of the eruption m httle more than twer iy.