After two or more days the fever mounts gradually, the throat symptoms increase, the eruption fades away, and from four to eight days later the patient’s condition returns to normal.

At the beginning of the second week desquamation, or scaling, begins, the skin peeling off in minute flakes.  At this stage heavy sweats set in and the excretion of urine is increased.

In epidemic form the type is sometimes much more malignant, even to the degree that death occurs on the first day with typhoid and inflammatory brain symptoms, unconsciousness, convulsions, delirium, excessive temperature, and rapid pulse.  This may happen even without the eruption becoming fairly recognizable.  In such severe epidemics the throat symptoms are apt to take on the aspect of diphtheria.  The renal discharge exhibits the conditions of a catarrh of the urinary canals originating from causes we do not understand.

Among the after effects of scarlet fever are inflammation of the ear with all its consequences, and inflammatory affections of the lungs, air passages, diaphragm and heart membrane.

The cause, I repeat again, is dysaemia—­impure blood.

If the patient is predisposed to this form of disease and moreover, a weakling, the case is a dangerous one.

Every good mother should see to it that there is healthy blood in her offspring.  The task is comparatively an easy one, the method, is simple and ignorance ceases to be an excuse, for my object is to place the necessary knowledge within the reach of all.

The treatment of scarlet fever varies according to which symptoms are most severe.

In the first place prophylactic efforts must be constantly employed to prevent possible contagion.  Healthy children must be strictly seperated from the sick till the end of desquamation or scaling—­a period of four to six weeks.

If the course of the attack is normal, the patient should be kept in bed under a light cover with a room temperature of 60 deg. to 65 deg..  The sick room must be well ventilated and aired daily.

The windows should be hung with transparent red curtains.

The diet may consist of milk, curds, barley soup, oatmeal gruel, flour gruel, with some cooked fruit and, of drinks, lemonade, soda water, and raspberry juice; but the most important drink from a scientific point is Dechmann’s “Tonogen,” as previously described.

The linen should be changed often

Sponge baths with chilled vinegar-water (1 part cider vinegar diluted with 2 parts water) are helpful when the temperature rises to 102 deg..  If the temperature reaches 105 deg. or over, baths must be promptly administered.  The patient may be placed in a bath of 85 deg. or 90 deg., and the water allowed to cool gradually down to 70 deg. or 65 deg..

A sick child may stay in such a bath ten or twenty minutes, while the time in a bath practically should not be more than three or five minutes.  The bath must be repeated as soon as the fever again reaches 105 deg..