day of the eruption I charged a lancet from two of the pustules, and on the next day I inoculated two children, one two years, the other four months old, with the matter.  At the same time I inoculated the mother and eldest sister with variolous matter taken from Master H—.  On the fifth day of their inoculation all their arms were inflamed alike; and on the eighth day the eldest of those inoculated from the nurse sickened, and the youngest on the eleventh.  They had both a plentiful eruption, from which I inoculated several others, who had the disease very favourably.  The mother and the other child sickened about the same time, and likewise had a plentiful eruption.

“Soon after, a man in the village sickened with the smallpox and had a confluent kind.  To be convinced that the children had had the disease effectually I took them to his house and inoculated them in both arms with matter taken from him, but without effect.”

These are not brought forward as uncommon occurrences, but as exemplifications of the human system’s susceptibility of the variolous contagion, although it has been previously sensible of its action.

Happy is it for mankind that the appearance of the small-pox a second time on the same person, beyond a trivial extent, is so extremely rare that it is looked upon as a phaenomenon!  Indeed, since the publication of Dr. Heberden’s paper on the Varicellae, or chicken-pox, the idea of such an occurrence, in deference to authority so truly respectable, has been generally relinquished.  This I conceive has been without just reason; for after we have seen, among many others, so strong a case as that recorded by Mr. Edward Withers, Surgeon, of Newbury, Berks, in the fourth volume of the Memoirs of the Medical Society of London (from which I take the following extracts), no one, I think, will again doubt the fact.

“Mr. Richard Langford, a farmer of West Shefford, in this county (Berks), about fifty years of age, when about a month old had the smallpox at a time when three others of the family had the same disease, one of whom, a servant man, died of it.  Mr. Langford’s countenance was strongly indicative of the malignity of the distemper, his face being so remarkably pitted and seamed as to attract the notice of all who saw him, so that no one could entertain a doubt of his having had that disease in a most inveterate manner.”  Mr. Withers proceeds to state that Mr. Langford was seized a second time, had a bad confluent smallpox, and died on the twenty-first day from the seizure; and that four of the family, as also a sister of the patient’s, to whom the disease was conveyed by her son’s visiting his uncle, falling down with the smallpox, fully satisfied the country with regard to the nature of the disease, which nothing short of this would have done; the sister died.

“This case was thought so extraordinary a one as to induce the rector of the parish to record the particulars in the parish register.”