Mr. Chandler attributes it to the practice of communicating the disorder with crude lymph; but Dr. Dimsdale informed you, from long experience, that the mode of communication is a matter of indifference. Dr. Glass ascribes it to the effect of sudorifics, administered at the period of eruption; but Mr. Chandler told you, that the Suttonian practice requires no such effect from the medicines; and Dr. Dimsdale pursues a contrary method. As to preparation, it evidently appears from the Levant practice, from that of the Somersetshire operator, and from Dr. Dimsdale’s confession, that it is a matter of much less importance than hath generally been supposed; or rather, it appears to be of no importance at all. Nevertheless, we are obliged to acknowledge, that fewer patients have died under inoculation within those few years, than formerly, when the practice was in its infancy. It should therefore seem natural to conclude, that some considerable improvement has been made; but the nature of this improvement appears, from the proceedings of this day, to be yet _in nubibus_. That this new method of inoculation hath been amazingly successful, is beyond all contradiction; but that this success is not confined to the Prisoner at the bar, is equally indisputable. None of our patients die. The success is universal. Whether we prepare our patients or not; whether we give them mercury, or no mercury; whether we inoculate with crude lymph, or with matter ultimately variolated; whether we sweat them in the eruptive fever, or send them into the cold air; in short, let us proceed as we will, to kill a patient by inoculation, seems to be out of our power. From these _data_, I think, you may rationally conclude, that the Prisoner himself is totally ignorant of the real cause of his successful practice; and if you are of that opinion, this being a Court of equity, you must necessarily acquit him of the crimes laid to his charge. But as judge of this Court, for the sake of truth, and the more effectually to exculpate the Prisoner at the bar, I shall now endeavour to explain this mysterious affair.