SMALL-POX.

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no small importance. Acrid matter, by lodging long in thepustules, cannot fail to corrode the tender skin ; by whichmany a handsome face becomes so deformed as hardly to beara resemblance to the human figure.*

It is generally necessary, after the small-pox are gone off,to purge the patient. If however the belly has been openthrough the whole course of the disease, or if buttermilkand other things of an opening nature have been drankfreely after the height of the small-pox, purging becomes lessnecessary ; but it ought never wholly to be neglected.

For very young children, an infusion of senna and prunes,with a little rhubarb, may be sweetened with coarse sugar,and given in small quantities till it operates. Those who arefarther advanced must take medicines of a sharper nature.For example, a child of five or six years of age may takeeight or ten grains of fine rhubarb in powder over night, andthe same quantity of jalap in powder next morning. Thismay be wrought off with fresh broth or water gruel, and maybe repeated three or four times, five or six days interveningbetwixt each dose. For children farther advanced, and adults,the dose must be increased in proportion to the age and con-stitution.

When imposthumes happen after the small-pox, which isnot seldom the case, they must be brought to suppuration assoon as possible, by means of ripening poultices ; and, whenthey have been opened, or break of their own accord, the pa-tient must be purged. The Peruvian bark and a milk dietwill likewise be useful in this case.

When a cough, a difficulty of breathing, or other symp-toms of a consumption, succeed to the small-pox, the patientmust be sent to a place where the air is good, and put upona course of ass's milk, with such exercise as he can bear.For further directions in this case, see the article Consump-tions.

INOCULATION.

Though no disease, after it is formed, baffles the powersof medicine more than the small-pox, yet more may be done

* Though this operation can never do harm, yet it is only necessarywhen the patient has a great load of small-pox, or when the matterwhich they contain is of so thin and acrid a nature that there is reason to apprehend bad consequences from its being too quickly resorbed,or taken up again into the mass of circulating humors.15*