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troublesome symptoms that used sometimes to ensue in the neighborhood of the incision, for want of a better method of performing the operation, owing to a groundless apprehension which prevailed, that in any other way, the disorder would not take. There are but few now conversant in the practice, who will allow that those who die from inoculation exceed one in a thousand of those who take the small pox that way; and we hear of some who have inoculated several thousands, successfully, without a single miscarriage. Can there be a stronger argument than this, in favour of the operation, especially when we further add, that wherever it has been practised, even by the most illiterate persons, it has always been attended with remarkable success?
Not to take up too much time on a subject that has given employment to so many able pens, I shall satisfy myself, for the present, in just pointing at a few of the advantages arising from this practice. And those such as are obvious to every one who will allow himself to reflect ever so little upon its salutary effects. In the first place then, it is highly beneficial to the patient, that he has it in his power to receive the disease from a healthy subject, in its mildest state, and in the safest manner, and in the absence of every other disease. The choice of the patient's age, of the temperature of the air, season of the year, states of the blood, and general habit of the body, "free from gouty, rheumatic, scorbutic, inflammatory, or feverish dispositions of every kind," as well as of
