the fatality which attended this practice was almost inconceivable;
and I cannot account for it on any other principle than that of the
matter being placed in this situation instead of the skin.

It was the practice of another, whom I well remember, to pinch up a
small portion of the skin on the arms of his patients and to pass
through it a needle, with a thread attached to it previously dipped
in variolous matter. The thread was lodged in the perforated part,
and consequently left in contact with the cellular membrane. This
practice was attended with the same ill success as the former.
Although it is very improbable that any one would now inoculate in
this rude way by design, yet these observations may tend to place a
double guard over the lancet, when infants, whose skins are
comparatively so very thin, fall under the care of the inoculator.

A very respectable friend of mine, Dr. Hardwicke, of Sodbury in this
county, inoculated great numbers of patients previous to the
introduction of the more modern method by Sutton, and with such
success, that a fatal instance occurred as rarely as since that
method has been adopted. It was the doctor's practice to make as
slight an incision as possible _upon_ the skin, and there to lodge a
thread saturated with the variolous matter. When his patients became
indisposed, agreeably to the custom then prevailing, they were
directed to go to bed and were kept moderately warm. Is it not
probable then, that the success of the modern practice may depend
more upon the method of invariably depositing the virus in or upon
the skin, than on the subsequent treatment of the disease?

I do not mean to insinuate that exposure to cool air, and suffering
the patient to drink cold water when hot and thirsty, may not
moderate the eruptive symptoms and lessen the number of pustules;
yet, to repeat my former observation, I cannot account for the
uninterrupted success, or nearly so, of one practitioner, and the
wretched state of the patients under the care of another, where, in
both instances, the general treatment did not differ essentially,
without conceiving it to arise from the different modes of inserting
the matter for the purpose of producing the disease. As it is not the
identical matter inserted which is absorbed into the constitution,
but that which is, by some peculiar process in the animal economy,
generated by it, is it not probable that different parts of the human
body may prepare or