SYMPTOMS.——When this is a primary disease, it makes its attack, like most other eruptive fevers, with a slight shivering, which is succeeded by heat, loss of strength, faintishness, sighing, a low quick pulse, difficulty of breathing, with great anxiety and oppression of the breast. The patient is restless, and sometimes delirious; the tongue appears white, and the hands shake, with often a burning heat in the palms; and in child-bed-women the milk generally goes away, and the other discharges stop. The patient feels an itching or pricking pain under the skin, after which innumerable small pustules of a red or white colour begin to appear. Upon this the symptoms generally abate, the pulse becomes more full and soft, the skin grows moister, and the sweat, as the disease advances, begins to have a peculiar fœtid smell; the great load on the breast, and oppression of the spirits, generally go off, and the customary evacuations gradually return. About the sixth or seventh day from the eruption, the pustules begin to dry and fall off, which occasions a very disagreeable itching in the skin. It is impossible to ascertain the exact time when the pustules will either appear or go off. They generally come out on the third or fourth day, when the eruption is critical; but, when symptomatic, they may appear at any time of the disease. Sometimes the pustules appear and vanish by turns. When that is the case, there is always danger; but when they go in all of a sudden, and do not appear again, the danger is very great. In child-bed-women the pustules are commonly at first filled with clear water, afterwards they grow yellowish. Sometimes they are interspersed with pustules of a red colour. When these only appear the disease goes by the name of a _rash_. REGIMEN.——In all eruptive fevers, of whatever kind, the chief point is to prevent the sudden disappearing of the pustules, and to promote their maturation. For this purpose the patient must be kept in such a temperature, as neither to push out the eruption too fast, nor to cause it to retreat prematurely. The diet and drink ought therefore to be in a moderate degree nourishing and cordial; but neither strong nor heating. The patient’s chamber ought neither to be kept too hot nor cold; and he should not be too much covered with clothes. Above all, the mind is to be kept easy and cheerful. Nothing so certainly makes an eruption go in as fear, or the apprehension of danger. The food must be weak chicken-broth with bread, panado, sago, or groat gruel, &c. to a gill of which may be added a spoonful or two of wine, as the patient’s strength requires, with a few grains of salt and a little sugar. Good apples roasted or boiled, with other ripe fruits of an opening cooling nature, may be eaten. The drink may be suited to the state of the patient’s strength and spirits. If these be pretty high, the drink ought to be weak; as water-gruel, balm-tea, or the decoction mentioned below[85].