SCARLET FEVER, or SCARLATINA, a contagious febrile disease, almost al ways attended during a part of its course by a rash and by sore throat. Sometimes only one of these features is well marked, sometimes both. Though persons of all ages are susceptible to it, it is eminently a disease of children. It is infectious and contagion may be carried by clothing, school-books, etc. Like smallpox or measles it rarely attacks a person more than once. It usually conies on with shiverings and a feeling of lassitude, fol lowed by more or less of fever, restless ness, loss of appetite, headache, nausea, and occasionally by vomiting. The erup tion appears on the second or third day in the form of closely aggregated points about the size of a pin's head. The period of desquamation, owing to excessive pro duction of new epidermis, follows in two or three days. The eruption is most marked on the face. The throat is seriously involved, the tonsils becoming swollen with catarrhal pharyngitis, tena cious mucous secretion, and oedema, with great difficulty in swallowing. Inflam mation of the parotids and other glands often occurs, with suppuration and ab scess, destroying the cell tissues, with sloughing, and occasionally fatal hemor rhage.
Physicians have generally distinguished three different varieties of scarlet fever ; viz., S. simplex, in which there is a florid
rash and little or no affection of the throat; S. anginosa, in which both the skin and the throat are decidedly im plicated; and S. maligna, in which the stress of the disease falls on the throat. S. simplex is a very mild form of the dis ease, and deviates only slightly from a state of health. Scarlatina is also dan gerous from its tendency to give rise to other complaints, as boils or strumous ulcers, various forms of scrofula, etc. The kidneys are more affected in this dis ease than any other organ, nephritis being a common accompaniment, and dropsy a very frequent sequel. It is very contagious, the infection persisting for a long time, and tending to attack every member of a family not protected by a previous attack. Its regular course is from two to three weeks, the period of Infection being strongest during the process of desquamation, and lasting for about three weeks from the commence ment of that process. It is most fatal in the very young, during pregnancy, or in adults suffering from organic diseases, or when complications exist. There is no known specific for this formidable mal ady.