number, except those who had taken the mercurial medicine.
Of those who were inoculated with only three days abstinence from animal food, the medium of the four was seventy-three; which is one more to each than those who had taken the calomel. Of these, however, one had but four pustules.
I here must remark, that from many trials I had heretofore made, and from the relation of others highly worthy of credit, I had long entertained doubts of the efficacy of mercurials, quatenus mercurials, lessening the quantity, and consequently the danger of the small-pox. I mean, here, what is usually called the alterative property of mercurial medicines, and not what depends upon their purging quality.
Such is the state of the facts, from which every person is at liberty to make such deductions as he may think they will admit of. To me it appears, that after ten or twelve days abstinence from animal food and heating liquors, the person being in other respects in good health, it is of no very great importance with what kind of variolous matter he is inoculated; as in every one of the histories before mentioned, though the treatment was so different, the small-pox was so slight as scarce to deserve the name of a disease. It should seem, however, from the result of these; that after a few previous gentle purges, in which mercurial preparations have no part, and the variolous matter being inserted in its watery state, that the supervening eruptions will
