“Rather, the effects of the poison. Though the patient may feel quite well, the whole machinery of the body is out of gear. What do you do when your machinery goes wrong, Clyde?”
“Stop it, of course.”
“Of course,” repeated the Health Master. “Obviously we can’t stop the machinery of life, but we can ease it down to its lowest possible strain, until it has had a chance to readjust itself. That is what I want to do in Charley’s case.”
“How does this poison affect the system?”
“If I could discover that, I’d be sure of a place in history. All we know is that no organ seems to be exempt from its sudden return attack long after the disease has passed. If we ever get any complete records, I venture to say that we’ll find more children dying in after years from the results of scarlet fever than die from the immediate disease itself, not to mention such after-effects as deafness and blindness.”
“I’ve noticed that,” said Grandma Sharpless, “when we lived in the country. And I remember a verse on the scarlet-fever page of an old almanac:—
If they run from nose or ear,
Watch your children for a year.
But I always set down those cases to catching cold.”
“Most people do. It isn’t that. It’s overstrain put on a poisoned system. And it’s true not of scarlet fever alone, but of measles, and diphtheria, and grippe; and, in a lesser degree, of whooping-cough and chicken pox.”
“You’ve seen such cases in your own practice?” asked Mr. Clyde, and regretted the question as soon as he had put it, for there passed over Dr. Strong’s face the quick spasm of pain which anything referring back to the hidden past before he had come to the Clyde house always brought.