Inoculated Small-pox.—Long before vac cination was known it had been observed that persons who were inoculated with small-pox, into whose skin, that is to say, the small-pox poison was deliberately inserted, usually from a milder form of the disease than those who caught the infection in the ordinary way, while at the same time they were pro tected from another attack. It appears that the habit of. inoculating small-pox was prac tised from time immemorial in Persia and China, just because small-pox was so common that few could escape it, and because the attack was less likely to be fatal when deliberately communicated in this way. An English lady, Lady Mary Wortley Montague, observed the practice while residing in Constantinople in 1717, and had her son of six years of age in oculated with success. Returning to England she announced the practice in 1721, and had it performed with good result upon her daughter. As a result the practice spread, but met with much opposition. But after a time it was ac cepted, and generally performed till vaccination was introduced.
On the second day after matter from a small pox pustule has been introduced under the skin of a person, a pimple appears at the spot. By the fourth (lay it has become a bleb, and by the seventh or eighth the milky fluid in the bleb has become matter, that is, the bleb has become a pustule. It is surrounded by a red
inflamed ring, which increases up to the tenth day, and on which a number of smaller pustules appear, round the large one, which also in creases in size. It is not till this time that any signs of general disturbance appear. But now shiverings occur, fever arises, headache and pains in the loins are felt, and there is vomiting—the usual signs of the beginning of attack of small-pox. On the eleventh, twelfth, or thirteenth day after the inoculation the ordinary small-pox rash, appeals, which follows the course described under distinct small-pox.
Small-pox so produced is infectious, and an inoculated person might, therefore, originate an epidemic. Moreover, though usually mild, it was sometimes disfiguring and fatal. One can, then, understand how at one time the disease was feared and dreaded, when persons would run the risk of being inoculated rather than take the chance of escaping infection in the ordinary way. This is one of many facts of which the agitators who denounce vaccina tion are surely ignorant.