So soothing and comforting is the application of the oil, that almost the youngest patients look forward to its re-application, will at once tell you when the body is getting hot and dry, and will in all probability ask to be allowed to apply the liniment themselves when they begin to feel uncomfortable, especially at the inflammatory stage of the vesicles when they are just changing to their pustular condition. What is gained by the above treatment? 1. The carbolised oil soothes and cools down the inflamed surface of the skin, exactly as is done when oil is applied to a burn. 2. The cotton keeps all air from the skin, and aids in keeping the skin moist with the oil. 3. The oil saturates the surface of the eruption, penetrates into the skin desiccation, and as the oil becomes heated by the temperature of the body it gives off some of its carbolic acid in the form of gas. 4. The carbolic acid keeps the oil from becoming rancid. 5. If the liniment is applied to the eruption at a sufficiently _early_ stage, viz., when the eruption is becoming vesicular, the carbolised oil on the surface of the eruption, and the gaseous carbolic acid, between the skin and the cotton and in the interstices of the cotton, prevent the microbes of the atmosphere from coming into direct contact with the epidermis, and subsequently with the contents of the vesicle, the result of which is the contents of the vesicle do not become pustular and purulent; and the eruption dries up without ulceration. 6. If the liniment is applied _late_ in the vesicular stage, or not until the pustular stage has set in, the carbolised oil penetrates more or less into the epidermis which is being thrown off by the suppuration of the pustule; as the pus is discharged by rupture of the epidermis the oil mixes with the pus, disinfects it, and keeps it sweet, as is to be observed by the entire non-existence of, or extremely modified condition of, the horrid stench that accompanies small-pox, subsequent to the pustular stage of the disease. 7. The exuviæ becoming loaded with the carbolised oil, are (probably) disinfected and are incapable of spreading the disease. 8. If the eruption is prevented from reaching the pustular stage, the complications that would otherwise have resulted from pus absorption are no longer to be dreaded, such as the secondary fever, boils, abscesses, acute cellulitis, erysipelas, pyæmia, &c. &c. No eroding ulcers with deep cavities, leaving the well-known cicatrices of small-pox, are produced. 9. The pustular stage having occurred before the carbolised oil treatment was applied, it still proves of immense value, as it prevents the pus becoming impure and poisonous, and this greatly ameliorates the results of the disease even at this stage.