The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1870-11-18
SCARLET FEVER.

"flesh is heir to-" is prevailing in some
sections of the county, and for the informa-
ton of our readers we publish the follow
ing in reference to the causes which pro-
mote its dissemination, from an eminent
medical periodical.
We would particularly call the attention
of our Board of County School Commits
sioners, to the expediency of instructing
the teachers to be particularly careful in
not permitting children to attend the pub
lie schools of the county, whenever any
contagious disease may be existing at their
homes, and more especially so if it should
be scarlet fever:
HOW SCARLET FEVER IS SPREAD.
The enormous mortality from scarlet fe-
yer which appears in the Registrar Gener-
ais mortality bills is now constant and
increasing quantity. 1t is assuming pro-
portions which are alarming; not the less
so, because they are increased by individual
carelessness. 1t has always been il source
of great mortality; and, in the absence of
any means OF checking its progress, such as
we possess in vaccination for smallpox,
and by attention to the water supply and
drainage for cholera and some forms of
| pythogenic fever, it becomes the more ne
cessary accurately to investigate the means
by which it is spread. These may DC sum-
med up chiefly in a few words. 1t is spread
| by personal carelessness, by neglect, and by
recklessness of individuals as to the public
safety. Scarlet fever is propagated from
person to person by culpable ignorance and
criminal neglect. Cleanliness and general
sanitary regulations are of use in mitiga-
ting the severity of the disease, but are no
bar to its propagation. Let us take the
experience Of one London physician during
the past week, and it will easily explain
how scarlet fever is now being spread He
tells us that he has become cognizant of
the following cases during that time:-
Travelling by rail, he was requested not to
put down the window, us little boy in the
carriage was not very well. The boy was
on his way home from school where scar
let fever had broken out; and, on examin-
ing him, the eruption was fully evident
A clergyman brought into his room lad,
not to consult him about the lad, but mad
vertently. He was about to take him into
the country. This lad had just recovered
from scarlet fever, and was in the desquam-
tive stage of convalesence, shedding about
those scales which are so highly infectious,
and are enough to poison the whole popu-
lation. His washer woman had scarlet fe-
yer in her family; she asccrtained that it
was conveyed by the clothing OLA scarlet
fever patient sent by the friends to the wash
without any caution. These are all acts of
the most culpable and dangerous negli-
gence. Scarlet fever is one Of the m st in
tensely and continuously contagious dis
eases. Till the completion of the subse-
quent process of peelirg of the skin, the
patient, his clothing and discharges, and
the light scales which are ditfused in the
atmosphere from his peeling surface-skin,
are pregnant with poison. Not only should
he be carefully isolated; not only should
his clothing and all that comes in contact
with him be carefully and thoroughly dis.
infected; not only should his body be an
ointed, as DR.. Budd has recommended,
with oil to limit the aerial diffusion of the
epidermal scales; but the utmost care
should be exercised by the persons attend
ing him not to become carriers of this vru-
lent and subtitle poison. TO send to the
laundress garments fatal as those of Dean-
ira, to expose in public carriage or a
crowded waiting-room the fertile sources
of deadly and volatile poison, are terrible
offences against the public safety. They
are constantly and carelessly committed
and it is thus that scarlatina is SPREAD
British Medical Journal.