The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1885-01-24
In Scarlet Fever Time.
Harper's Bazar.


the colder season of the year is that ter
ror of all mothers, the scarlet fever,
which although confined to no particu-
lar season, and having, like death, all
seasons for its own,. nevertheless seems
always to rage with more vehemence
when the mercury gets down among the
small figures.
Unlike the measles, which most
mothers think it desirable for their chill
dren to have early, there is almost no
pains which wise mothers will 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 life, and
often beauty, it seldom, after good re-
covery, 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 effect to
deadly purpose some vital organ with
long and slow and painful decay. PoE's
terrible story of the Masque 0fkhe Red
DEATH had in it some elements of the
horror that belongs to this pestilence
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 par
ent and household had he seen it bring
about.
When we see disease which, even
on recovery, drags after it in most in
stances long sequelae of other ailments,
often yelled and obscure and not easy
to reach and treat-kidney affections,
lung troubles, glandular difficulties,
idiocy, and the rest-we can judge of
the virulence of the original thing itself.
And if by any chance we see the child
itself enduring the first distress, the
final agony, crying out in blind wonder
at its own suffering, yielding up its brief
life perhaps in delirium, perhaps in
faintness, with the pangs of suspense
and despair of the mother bending over
it, and the desolation 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 cap
able 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-every 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, act
with an almost criminal carelessness in
the matter, and that, of course, with no
intention other than good ones, but
partly from ignorance and partly from
thoughtlessness and partly from gener-
al 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, go and come,
here and there, in and out, as they
please. "Oh, it is only slight case !"
they answer you if you question their
action, forgetful of the fact that the
most malignant form can be developed
from the contagion of the very slightest
case of scarlatina, scarlatina being the
generic name of the disease in any form,
and not merely of its slightest develop
ment. The doctor goes and comes un-
avoidably through the hall and up and
down the common stairway between
the door and the sick-room, nobody
knows how many germs of the disease
clinging to the woollen fbres of his
garments to be scattered in the hall and
on the stairs, over which the rest of the
family pass necessarily many times a
day, to gather them up in their own
clothes, and have them readyto disSem-
mate whenever they go out among
people. The nurses, too, and those
| in attendance on the sick-room, go up
and down into the kitchen and else
where 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 contaminated, go out
freely on the street, what deadly work
is it they do, all unintentionally and
unconsciously, what seeds of death and
sorrow do they scatter with every wave
of their garments as they walk and as
they encounter people on the streets or
venture into houses!
Doubtless it is hard and unpleasant,
a sort of Imprisonment, indeed, for
people not Immediately concerned in
| the work for the sick to shut themselves
up when sach trouble is in the house
but there are always ways for them to
get enough fresh air to keep themselves
| in health. And for the rest of it, if the
thing comes, it should be received like
any other dispensation, and borne with
becoming strength and self-denial, even
if that requires abstinence from church
and concert and ball, the foregoing Of
the morning shopping and the after
noon stroll. For fully three weeks
after the patient is out of danger and
convalescing process called desquama
tion-a shedding of the scarf skin
! goes on with the little rArson, erd s-,sr5
flake of that cuticle waited abroad Il
but incubation of the disease whenever
received. Isolation, then, can not bt
too much regarded and if we do no1
here speak of disinfection it is because
we believe everybody in the world mus
now know the value and necessity o
that in its most extended form, while
many forget or are not aware OF tn
need of complete isolation. There