Roseburg review. [volume] (Roseburg, Or.) 1885-1920, 1885-03-13
SCARLET FEVER.
Absolute Necessity or Complete Isolation
when This Disease Is In Our Midst.

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Absolute Necessity or Complete Isolation
When This Disease Is In Our Midst.
One of the usual accompaniment of
the colder season of the year is that
terror of all mothers, the scarlet fever,
which, although confined to no partic-
ular season, and having, like death, all
seasons for its own, nevertheless seems
always to rage with more yehemence
when the mercury gets down among
the small figures.
Unlike the measles, which most moth
aers think it desirable for their children
to have early, there is almost no pains
which wise mothers viii not take TO
avert from their children this fearful
evil, than which no other disease is so
much to be dreaded. And it is justly
that this dread is felt; not even the
smallpox is SO deserving Of it. for al
though that sometimes takes LIE, and
often beauty, it seldom, after good re-
coyery, does further damage But the
scarlet fever, even if the little patient
escapes with life, is as likely as not to
poison the blood, to injure the brain,
TO destroy the hearing, or to affect to
deadly purpose some vital organ with
long and slow and painful decay. Poe's
terrible story of the ssMasque of the
Red Death had in it some elements of
the horror that belongs to this pesti-
lence that Walketh by MONDAY; and we
have known an aged physician who
never could speak of this especial form
of fever without tears springing to his
eyes, so much misery to child and
parent and household had he seen it
bring about.
When we see a disease which, even
on recovery. drugs after it in most in
stances long sequele of other ailments,
often yelled and obscure and NOT easy
to reach and treat kidney affections,
lung troubles. glandular difficulties,
id:ocy and the rest-we can judge of
the yirulence of the original thing it
self. And if by any chance we see the
child itself enduring the first distress,
the final agony, crying out in blind
wonder at It's own suffering, yielding
up its brief life perhaps in delir.um.
perhaps in faintness, with the pangs of
bending over it, and the desolatton of
the home it leaves so empty of its
sweet presence, till it seems as if there
were nothing but suffering in the
world-When by any chance we have
seen all this. have fought our own
fight with disease capable of working
such woe-then it seems to us that We
would almost give our own life rather
than be the means of diffusing such
trouble, of increasing the suffering of
the world, of bringing such pain and
sorrow upon another person who loved
child.
Yet it is an almost universal thing
for families-eyery individual of whom
would feel all this shrinking from in
creasing the sorrows of the world -in-
stead of doing their utmost to prevent
the spread of the terrible infection.
acting with an almost criminal care
lessness in the matter. and that, of
course, with no intention other
than good ones, but partly from
ignorance and partly from thought
lessness and partly from a
general trusting TO luck. There is a
case of fever in the house; they isolate
it. and then they think they have done
their whole duty; they themselves, if
not needed in attendance, 60 and come,
here and there, in and out, as they
please. ..Oh, it is only slight easel
they answer You if you question their
action, forgetful of the fact that the
most malignant form can be developed
from the contag on of the very slight
est case OF scarlatina, scarlatina being
the generic name of the disease in any
form, and not merely of its lightest de-
velopment The doctor goes and comes
unavoidably through the hall and up
down the common stairway between the
door and the sick,ro nobody knows
| how many germs of the disease cling
ing to the wooden fibres of his garments
to be scattered in the hall and on the
stairs, over which the rest of the family
pass necessarily many times day, to
gather them up in their own clothes,
and have them ready to disseminate
whenever they 60 out among people.
The nurses, too, and those In attend-
ance on the sick-room, go up and down
into the kitchen and elsewhere about
the house, carrying with them more or
! less of the atmosphere of the room and
all that belongs to it, again to be
possibly caught up by those who have
never gone near the patient; and
the very dogs and cats about
the place, to say nothing of the
flies, are liable TO gather the dangerous
unknown force in their long fur, and
bring it to the other members of the
family. If then these other members
Of the family, thus virtually contain
mated, go out freely on the street, what
deadly work is it they do. all uninten-
tionally and unconsc:ously, what seeds
of death and sorrow do they scatter
with every wave of their garments al
they walk and as they encounter pco-
/ pie on the street or venture into houses
Doubtless it is hard and unpleasant,
sort of imprisonment, indeed, for peo-
/ pie not Immediately concerned in the
work for the sick to shut themselves uI
when such trouble is in the house; bui
there are always ways for them tc gel
enough fresh air to keep themselves in
health. And for the rest of it, if the
thing it should bereceivedl keany
other dispensation, and borne with
becoming strength and self-denial, even
If that requires abstinence from church
and concert and call, the foregoing o
the morning shopp ng and the after
noon stroll. For fully three weeks aftel
the patient is out of danger and con
valescing process called desquamato o
J Ia shedding of the scarf skim goes OF
with the little person, and every flake o
that cuticle waited abroad is but in
oculation of the disease wherever re
! ceived. Isolation, then can not be tos
much regarded; and if we do not her
speak of disinfection it is because W.
believe everybody in the world mus
now know the value and necessity o
that in its most extended form, whil'