Page:The New Method of Inoculating for the Small-Pox - Benjamin Rush.djvu/24

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2d. To mitigate troublesome and alarming symptoms.

The fever which produces the eruption is generally of the inflammatory kind. It sometimes therefore comes on with the symptoms of great heat, preceded with chilliness, and determination to the head and breast, and a full hard pulse. The remedies proper in this case are,

a. Blood-letting. The quantity to be drawn must be regulated by the violence of the symptoms, the constitution, habits, and even country of the patient, and by the season of the year. I have never found more than one bleeding, to the quantity of twelve or fourteen ounces, necessary in any stage or degree of the eruptive fever of the small-pox by inoculation.

b. Cool air is of the utmost consequence in the eruptive fever. The use of this remedy in fevers marks an æra, not only in the management of the small-pox, but in medicine. The degrees of cold should always be increased in proportion to the violence of the fever. Stove-rooms, so common in this country, should be carefully avoided. The more we oblige our patients to set up and walk in the open air, the bet-

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