i 3*5 Mr. hunter’s Account of a Woman 
variolous fjmulus, and is not affected by any external in- 
fluence whatever. 
The communication of the fmall pox to the child in 
the womb may be fuppofed to happen in two ways ; one 
by infection from the mother, as is fuppofed in the above 
cafe; the other by the mother’s having abforbed the fmall 
pox matter from fome other perfon, and the matter be- 
ing carried to the child from the connedtion between the 
two, which we may fuppofe done with or without firft 
affedting the mother. 
Teftimonies and opinions are various with refpedt to 
thefe two fadts. boerhaave feems to have been led bv 
J 
his experience to think that fuch infedtion was not com- 
municable: for we find that he attended a lady, who 
having, in the fixth month of her pregnancy, had the 
confluent fmall pox, brought forth at the regular period 
a child, who fhewed not the leaft veftige of his mother’s 
difeafe. 
His commentator, however, van swieten, fupports a 
different opinion (fee his Comment, vol. V ). He quotes 
a cafe from the Philofophical Tranfadtions, vol. XXVIII. 
N° 337* p. 165. of a woman, who, having juft gone 
through a mild fort of fmall pox, was, by means of a 
ftrong dofe of purging phyfic, thrown into a mifcarriage, 
7 and 
