110 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1725. 



An Account of the Anomalous Epidemic Small-Pox ; whicli began at Plymouth 

 in August \724. and continued to June 1725. By Dr. Huxham. N° SQO. 

 p. 379. 



The small-pox were preceded by the usual symptoms of that distemper ; but 

 the pains of the limbs and back were generally more severe than common, as 

 were likewise the nausea and vomiting. Numbers were seized with violent 

 colic pains, wliich would leave them on the eruption, or after a clyster or two 

 with a gentle anodyne : the stools were commonly bilious. It sometimes hap- 

 pened that the symptoms would not seem very severe before, and at the erup- 

 tion ; and yet the pox would prove very confluent and fatal. 



The pustules were very small, and did not regularly fill ; but, in a day or two 

 after the eruption, would flat and be depressed in the middle. This was ob- 

 served even in the distinct kind. In some persons they appeared in less than 24 

 hours from the seizure : when they broke out so very soon, they were always 

 of the confluent kind, as is commonly observed. The eruption was attended 

 with prodigious sneezing, especially in children. One child about five years 

 old, sneezed incessantly for more than 30 hours, nor could it be allayed but by 

 anodynes. This child had the confluent pox, and died the 13th day. In some 

 patients, both at and after the appearance of the pustules, they would itch most 

 intolerably ; this was generally a bad symptom ; as it was an argument of the 

 great acrimony of the morbific matter. 



In some few, a day or two after the eruption seemed to be completed, there 

 would appear in the interstices of the pox, several miliary pustules, some of a 

 dark red, others filled with a limpid serum : these never came to suppuration, 

 as the secondary crop of small-pox, which sometimes do; nor were they as 

 large. Though this is a bad symptom in general, yet in a girl of 7 years old, 

 her fever and delirium went totally off, on this eruption, and the urine im- 

 mediately settled. 



Some had abundance of purple petechias appear among the pox at the erup- 

 tion, and the pustules would look of a livid hue : in others, the purples would 

 not discover themselves, till the maturation. Of these, some died the 5th or 

 6th day, some dwindled on till the lOth or 1 1th. One only survived. 



During the suppuration, the pox would become very sessile, and the co- 

 herent kind would enlarge their bases exceedingly ; so that, though they seemed 

 for some time after the eruption to be very distinct, they would now flux to- 

 gether. A purple speck would often appear in the centre of the pustules, which 

 would spread, and grow blacker and blacker by degrees. The interstices would 



