Monday the 14th of the month, and 15th of the illness, early in the morning the attendant physician again examined the eruptions, and said that he not only found their number great, but that many of them on the back were broke and subsided while there were others under the skin perceptible to the touch; and a very few on the face and neck, though flat, were round and reddish in their circumference, and white on their tops, so resembling eruptions of the small-pox, that he suspected the distemper could be no other: to put the matter out of doubt, the physician, that had inoculated the child, was called in; who, when he came, observed two or three flat eruptions on the face, to be round, edged with a reddish colour, and whitish on the top, as is above described; but on uncovering the body, and examining the rest, the chief of which were situated on the back, he looked on them to have more the appearance of burns or scalds than the small-pox. They were of irregular forms, like flaccid and transparent vesicles, implete with a reddish watry fluid, with a visible blackness underneath. He could not from their appearance, considered from the time of their eruption, and the early fluidity of their contents after they appeared, see any reason to think them at all variolous, especially as the child had so evidently had the disease from inoculation under his own eyes.
Tuesday the 15th of the month, and 16th of the disease, the physician, who had inoculated the child, called again to see him, when he was informed, that he had totally lost all power of swallowing, and that it was suspected to arise from pustules in the throat. He then went to the child’s bedside, when he not only found many of the before described bladdery eruptions broken, and their water discharged, but all those that were not so, more flaccid and empty than the day before.
Wednesday the 16th of the month, and 17th of the disease, there was very little or no observable change in the morning from the circumstances which had attended the preceding day; yet some glimmering hope was conceived of the child’s recovery; but about two in the afternoon, the melancholy scene was closed by an easy death.
Thursday the 17th of the month, and the morrow after the child’s death, the physician that had inoculated the child called again, to inquire of the father if any thing more, that was material, had been observed between the time he had last seen the child, and the hour of his death, when he told him that there had not, but that since his death the corpse had been inspected and opened, in the presence of four eminent gentlemen of the faculty in Berlin, and that it had been reported to him as follows.
That the external spots, which had been covered with the before described bladders, had many of them a blackish, or gangrenous appearance under the skin; while others that were extremely small, round and flat, seemed to have in them a small quantity of unconcocted matter.
That on one out of the four places on the arms, in which the infection had been inserted in the inoculation, there was found adhering a small dry scab.
That the throat was perfectly free from any pustulary appearance; and that all the viscera were quite sound, and shewed no sign of any disease, either external or internal.
But that on opening the skull, there were, in the lower and back part of the head, four ounces of extravasated water or serum, except which, nothing deviated from a healthy and natural state.
Query. Was the disease above described, the natural small-pox? The effect of any variolous matter left in the blood, in consequence of the previous inoculation? Or, were the pustulary eruptions, which shewed themselves on the 12th day of the disease, a critical discharge of a putrid or other kind of fever?