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AX ACCOUNT OF A REMARKABLE FACT 



RELATIVE TO 



THE SMALL-POX. 



[Communicated in a Letter to Dr Simmons, F. R. S. ami first pub- 

 lished in tlie London Medical Journal for the Year 1786, vol. vii. 

 p. 63.] 



Having lately read an account of a curious fact relative to 

 inoculation, communicated by Mr Dawson, * surgeon at Sed- 

 bergh, in Yorkshire, to the College of Physicians in London, 

 and published in the third volume of their transactions ; I 

 beg leave to observe to you, that, in the course of a long and 

 extensive country practice in Jamaica, many facts have oc- 

 curred to convince me that, in the case of the small-pox, a 

 person may have a local affection without the habit in gene- 

 ral being tainted by the variolous poison. I have often had 

 occasion to observe that the arms of patients inoculated will 

 inflame and discharge an ichor for a few days, and then dry 

 up without the infection going farther ; yet those very per- 

 sons inoculated afresh, have at the proper time, had the small 

 pox fever and eruption, although the fact related by Mr 

 Dawson, serves to prove that the ichorous discharge from 

 the first incision in those patients would have been capable 

 of communicating the variolous infection to other persons. 



Nurses who suckle children ill of *mall-pox, frequently 

 have a few pustules on their breasts and arms without any 

 previous fever ; and any body who attends closely to, and 

 handles patients in that distemper, will be liable to have pus- 



* The reader will find an abstract of Mr Dawson's paper in next article 



