IV. We come now to consider the treatment of the body during the eruptive fever. On the eighth day after inoculation our patients are _generally_ seized with the common symptoms of fever. Sometimes this fever appears on the sixth and seventh day after inoculation. But when it is irregular, it is often delayed till the ninth and tenth days. I have seen many instances of it on the fourteenth, a few on the fifteenth and sixteenth, and _one_ case in which it did not come on till the eighteenth day after the infection was communicated to the body[60]. The place where the puncture was made with the lancet, or needle, generally serves as a harbinger of the approaching fever. A slight inflammation appears about it, and a pock rises up in the centre. But this remark is liable to some objections. I have seen _four_ instances in which the fever came on at the expected time, and the disease went through all its stages with the greatest regularity, and yet there was no sign of an inflammation or pock near the spot where the puncture was made: even the puncture itself became invisible. On the other hand, we sometimes see an inflammation and pock on the arm appear on the eighth and ninth days, without any fever accompanying them. Some physicians suppose that this inflammation and solitary pock are sufficient to constitute the disease; but repeated experience has taught me to be very cautious in relying upon these equivocal marks. It is true, I have sometimes seen patients secured against the small-pox, both in the natural way and by inoculation, where these marks have appeared; but I have as often seen such patients seized afterwards with the small-pox in the natural way, to the great distress of families, and mortification of physicians. Upon this account, I make it a constant practice to advise a second or third inoculation, where a fever and eruption have been wanting. As the absence of these symptoms is probably occasioned by the weakness or age of the variolous matter, or the too high state of preparation of the body, we should always guard against both, by making the puncture the second time with _fresh_ matter, by subjecting our patients to a _less_ abstemious diet, and by giving fewer doses of physic. I have heard it remarked, that if a slight redness and a small pimple appeared on the arm on the third day after inoculation, it was a sign the matter had infected the whole constitution. I acknowledge I have often seen a greater degree of redness on the third than on the second day after inoculation, but I have not been able to establish a diagnostic mark from it; for I have seen the disease produced on the usual days where the redness has appeared on the second day, and in some cases where it has not appeared until the eruptive fever.