To prevent infection one should beware of coming in contact with per sons who live in infected houses, and also of obtaining food (especially milk) from such houses. If it be apparent that a member of a family is suffering from scarlatina, he should at once be isolated from the rest of the family. The patient should be placed in a clean bed, in a room which it is not neces sary for other members of the family to pass through. The diet should consist of milk and water only. A physician should be called at once. The sick-room should be well ventilated, and the patient washed as often as possible ; full baths must be given if needed. This will remove the nauseating odour of herring-brine peculiar to many scarlatina patients. The members of the family should as much as possible be prevented from coming in contact with other pergons ; and if there be children in the family who are attending school, these should be kept at home, or live for a time with some relative. The wisest thing to do is to send the patient to a special hospital at the earliest opportunity. Persons nursing scarlet-fever patients should wear washable dresses which can be readily disinfected.
After the termination of the disease—the time being determined by the physician--the sick-room, as well as the body and bed linen of the patient, must be thoroughly disinfected by experienced persons. The poison of scarlatina is extraordinarily resistant to germicides, and may give rise to the disease even after many months. Soiled linen should be sterilized by placing it in a 5 per cent. solution of creosol-soap, and should be boiled before washing. See also the article on DISINFECTION.
If parents could be brought to learn that six weeks' loss of time at school is absolutely nothing when compared with the loss of hearing, the loss of eyesight, the chronic crippled joints, the chronic heart disease, and the weak and diseased kidneys, all of which are very common as results of scarlet fever, they could stamp out this disease, with all its suffering, by keeping the patients isolated and in bed until they are absolutely well.
SCHOOL.—The body and mind of the child during the period of de velopment are much more susceptible to external influences than arc the body and mind of the adult ; and anything that has impressed a man during his youth is better remembered and more vividly retained than events which occur later ill life. It is, therefore, of great importance that the education imparted in school should be as thorough and complete as possible. School education, however perfect, until recently was considered merely the develop ment of the mind ; and it has only lately been comprehended that quite as careful attention should be bestowed upon the development of the body, and that both mental and physical education should blend into a har monious whole. Many children remain in school until they are eighteen years of age, or more. They stay in school for several hours almost every day ; and it is obvious that many, even seemingly insignificant and slightly harm ful, inflUences may, with this opportunity of continued action, ultimately lead to serious injury.
Many dangers threaten the child while in school. — In the first place, owing to the long stay in overcrowded and insufficiently ventilated rooms, the processes of respiration may suffer, and with them the condition of the blood, and the entire nutrition. Hence, the pale appearance of many children, the looseness of the skin and muscles. and the loss of appetite. However, it is not alone the air of the room that causes these effects. Such disturbances of health arc often induced also by the fact that many children sit in a faulty attitude which more or less restricts the thorough expansion of the lungs. This is associated, consequently, with defective supply of oxygen to the blood, and with disturbances of the circulation of the blood in general. School headache of children, and nose-bleeding, which is as frequent, are ascribed to these disturbances. A permanently faulty attitude often leads also to abnormal curvatures of the spine (see VERTEBRAL COLUMN,