Page:A Treatise upon the Small-Pox.pdf/120

This page has been validated.
92
A Dissertation

that may prove fatal? The Numbers therefore, that have escaped the Small-Pox by Inoculation, cannot be computed, and the Balance settled, till hereafter it shall appear how many of those, who had only such spurious Symptoms, as before-mentioned, shall suffer the right and undisputed Sort in Time to come; for it appears by this Example, that the inoculated Person is not infallibly protected against all future Contagion of this Nature, since those Suffusions and irregular Breakings-out upon the Skin, attended with issuing Matter, which the Inoculators substitute as an Equivalent, or Succedaneum in the Room of the true Distemper, not only proved ineffectual and insignificant, but hurtful and dangerous.

The Instance I shall bring to make good the second Assertion is what Mr. Tanner, an experienced and judicious Surgeon, belonging to St. Thomas's Hospital, communicated to me. He affirmed, that to discover the Truth in this Matter, the following Experiment was performed in their House. A Person, who, as it was very evident, had undergone the Small-Pox before, was inoculated in due Form, and the Effect of the Operation was a Discharge from the Orifice of the Wound, and the irregular and anomalous Eruptions before described, that is, such as appear when the genuine Distemper is not produced; whence it is plain, that such Appearances may happen upon Inoculation, which bring forth with them

no