Variola

The eruption on the skin is characterized by the appearance of bright, red, hard acuminated points, the size of hemp-seeds, distinct from each other at first, and which, passing through the stages of vesicular and pustular inflammation, arrive at their maturity on the eighth day of eruption. The individual pustules then scab, their contents drying into brown masses which becdfne detached in from twelve to fifteen days, and leave behind in their place permanent cicatrices, or "pits". Variola is often preceded, as regards its local state, by more or less erythema, which subsides on the appearance of the vari. This has been termed erythema variolosa. Variola is said to be discrete, when the pustules are scattered over the surface; coherent, when the eruption is plentiful, and the vari are "closely packed side by side but still distinct", confluent, when they run together; modified, when the disease succeeds to a prior attack or occurs after inoculation. Variola is, by universal consent, divided into five stages: Incubation, which is reckoned by the length of time which elapses between exposure to the poison of the disease; and the development of the first effects (from five to twenty days); In­vasion (two days); Eruption; Suppuration; Desiccation.