With these exceptions, they have hitherto been kept very scrupulously to the diet at first directed. But after the eruption is completed, if occasion requires, they are indulged in a little well-boiled meat of the lightest kind, as chicken, veal, or mutton.
The regimen above-mentioned, the cooling alterative purges, and the free use of cool air at the season of eruption, almost universally prevent either alarming symptoms, or a large crop of pustules. A few I have seen with such a quantity of pustules, though distinct, that I have neither advised nor allowed them to go out of the house. But the generality of my patients, when the eruptions are few, amuse themselves abroad within proper limits, with the pustules out upon them.
I neither enjoin this, nor maintain that it is necessary; but have not been able to observe that any inconvenience has arisen from it. And, how strange soever it may appear, it is true, that those who are most adventurous, seem to be in better spirits, and more free from complaints, than others who are inclined to keep within-doors. And indeed, such of my patients as have received the benefit of this treatment themselves, seldom permit those who are in the hardest part of the distemper, the eruptive, to keep much in the house; but encourage them to bear a little hardship, by recounting to them the benefit they have reaped from the method they are recommending.
Those who have the disease in the slightest manner first described, viz. without any appearance of eruption but on the inoculated part, are soon allowed to go about their usual affairs; and many instances have happened of very industrious poor men, who have instantly returned to their daily labour, with a caution not to intermix with those who have not had the distemper, for fear of spreading it; and with directions to take two or three times of the purge already directed, or as many doses of Glauber’s salts. Those who have it in a greater degree, are confined somewhat longer; and a very mild laxative is now-and-then exhibited, if there is the least disposition to costiveness; as the progress to maturation appears rather to be advanced than retarded by the operation.
When the maturation is completed, and it is evident we have nothing further to fear from the distemper, I allow my patients gradually to change their course of diet, from the perfectly cooling kind, to one a little more generous; recommending strictly to all a return to their ordinary animal diet with much caution and restraint upon their appetites, both in respect to food and fermented liquors.
It is not often that we are under a necessity of making any application to the part where the operation was performed; it most commonly heals up, and is covered with a scab, about the time when, in a natural way, all the pocks would have been dried up: but there are some cases wherein the incisions continue to discharge a purulent matter longer; in these instances it is sufficient to cover the place with the white cerate, or any other mild emplastic substance, which may at once prevent the linen from adhering to the sore, and defend it from the air. And as in these cases the part remains unhealed from some peculiar cause in the habit, it will be necessary to give gentle purgatives, and proper alteratives, as particular exigencies may require.