Chills, feverishness, headache, nausea and actual vomiting are the initial symptoms, and sore throat with difficulty in swallowing soon follow.
Inspection reveals the appearance of an acute throat inflammation, and the tip and sides of the tongue are red as a raspberry. A few hours later—or at most a day or two—the eruption appears; first in the throat, then on the face and chest. It begins with minute, bright red, scattered spots, steadily growing larger until they run together so that the entire skin becomes scarlet, being completely covered with them. Frequently the temperature in the evening ranges as high as from 103° to 105° Fahrenheit. Albumen is always found in the urine.
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.