154 PRACTICE OF PHYSIC. 



The more exactly the disease retains the form of the distinct 

 kind, it is the safer ; and the more completely the disease takes 

 the form of the confluent kind, it is the more dangerous. 



It is only when the distinct kind shows a great number of 

 pustules on the face, or otherwise, by fever or putrescency, ap- 

 proaches to the circumstances of the confluent, that it is attend- 

 ed with any danger. 



In the confluent smallpox there is always danger ; and this 

 is always more considerable and certain, according as the fever 

 is more violent and permanent, and especially as the marks and 

 symptoms of putrescency are more evident. 



When the putrid disposition is very great, the disease some- 

 times proves fatal before the eighth day ; but in most cases it is 

 on the eleventh that death happens, and sometimes it is put off* 

 till the fourteenth or seventeenth day. 



Though the smallpox should not be immediately fatal, the 

 more violent kinds are often followed by a morbid state of the 

 body, of various kind and event. These consequences, as I 

 judge, may be imputed sometimes to an acrid matter produced 

 by the preceding disease, and deposited in different parts ; and 

 sometimes to an inflammatory diathesis produced, and determin- 

 ed to particular parts of the body. 



" These morbid states have not as yet been fully observed 

 and ascertained. Inflammations of the eye or of the lungs, or 

 tubercles of the lungs, are the most frequent consequences : the 

 affection of the eyes from the deposition of an acrid matter in 

 the sebaceous glands of the eyes : the tubercles from the same 

 in the lymphatic glands of the lungs." 



DXCIV. It is, I think, agreed among practitioners, that, in 

 the different cases of smallpox, the difference chiefly depends 

 upon the appearance of distinct or confluent ; and, from the 

 above description of these kinds, it will appear, that they chiefly 

 differ in the period of the eruption, in the number of pustules 

 produced, in the form of the pustules, in the state of the matter 

 contained in them, in the continuance of the fever, and, lastly, 

 in the danger of the disease. 



DXCV. Upon inquiring into the causes of these differences, 

 we might readily suspect, that they depended upon a difference 

 of the contagion producing the disease. This, however, is not 



