A few scattered pimples I have sometimes, though very rarely, seen, the greater part of which have generally disappeared quickly, but some have remained long enough to suppurate at their apex.  That local cuticular inflammation, whether springing up spontaneously or arising from the application of acrid substances, such for instance, as cantharides, pix Burgundica, antimonium tartarizatum, etc., will often produce cutaneous affections, not only near the seat of the inflammation, but on some parts of the skin far beyond its boundary, is a well-known fact.  It is, doubtless, on this principle that the inoculated cow-pock pustule and its concomitant efflorescence may, in very irritable constitutions, produce this affection.  The eruption I allude to has commonly appeared some time in the third week after inoculation.  But this appearance is too trivial to excite the least regard.

The change which took place in the general appearance during the progress of the vaccine inoculation at the Smallpox Hospital should likewise be considered.

Although at first it took on so much of the variolous character as to produce pustules in three cases out of five, yet in Dr. Woodville’s last report, published in June, he says:  “Since the publication of my reports of inoculations for the cow-pox, upwards of three hundred cases have been under my care; and out of this number only thirty-nine had pustules that suppurated; viz., out of the first hundred, nineteen had pustules; out of the second, thirteen; and out of the last hundred and ten, only seven had pustules.  Thus it appears that the disease has become considerably milder; which I am inclined to attribute to a greater caution used in the choice of the matter, with which the infection was communicated; for, lately, that which has been employed for this purpose has been taken only from those patients in whom the cow-pox proved very mild and well characterized.” [Footnote:  In a few weeks after the cow-pox inoculation was introduced at the Smallpox Hospital I was favoured with some virus from this stock.  In the first instance it produced a few pustules, which did not maturate; but in the subsequent cases none appeared.—­E.  J.]

The inference I am induced to draw from these premises is very different.  The decline, and, finally, the total extinction nearly, of these pustules, in my opinion, are more fairly attributable to the cow-pox virus, assimilating the variolous, [Footnote:  In my first publication on this subject I expressed an opinion that the smallpox and the cow-pox were the same diseases under different modifications.  In this opinion Dr. Woodville has concurred The axiom of the immortal Hauter, that two diseased actions cannot take place at the same time in one and the same part, will not be injured by the admission of this theory.] the former probably being the original, the latter the same disease under a peculiar, and at present an inexplicable, modification.