Page:New observations on inoculation - Angelo Gatti.djvu/99

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SERIES of EXPERIMENTS.
85

Upon reviewing what has been before laid down, it appears, that out of seventy-four, the whole sixty-two persons, who in consequence of inoculation had variolous pustules, had among them in number, two thousand three hundred and sixty-two; somewhat more than thirty-eight to each: an inconsiderable number indeed! as physicians daily see in one limb only of an adult person, labouring under the coherent, not to say confluent natural small-pox, a greater quantity of variolous matter than was found in all these persons put together.

The remaining twelve, though they had no eruption, I consider as having, in all probability gone through the disease; as the punctures of almost all of them were inflamed and turgid many days. When this happens, and no plaister has been applied, though neither febrile symptoms-nor pustules supervene, it is an argument of the variolous matter having infected the punctures. If after these, other punctures are made without effect, the variolous poison seems to have exerted its utmost power in the former punctures; and the small pox is no longer to be dreaded.

But to return; of those inoculated with the ichor of the natural small-pox,

Pustules at a medium.
Four boys, prepared with jalap and calomel, had, at a medium,
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14 each.
Of these, the boy who had most pustules had 25, the least 4.
 
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