ORDINARY CASES AND CASES OF SEVERE TYPE.—A safe temperature in scarlet fever may be considered at or below 103°. If it rise above this, measures designed to abstract heat are very important—more important even in many cases than the medicinal agents which are commonly used to combat this disease. Since a high temperature retards assimilation, promotes deleterious tissue-change, and causes rapid emaciation and loss of strength, measures designed to reduce it are urgently needed. "The production of heat depends chiefly on oxidation of the constituents of the body" (Billroth). Therefore fever indicates an increase of the oxidation and a molecular disintegration above the healthy standard. Hence the augmentation of urea in the urine and the progressive emaciation and loss of weight which characterize the febrile state. Fever also diminishes the secretions by which food is digested and destroys the appetite, so that repair of the waste is insufficient. Moreover, a high temperature continuing for a time tends to produce degenerative changes, albuminous and fatty, in the tissues, the more rapidly the higher the temperature, so that the functions of organs are seriously impaired. Among the most dangerous of the tissue-changes is granulo-fatty degeneration of the muscular fibres of the heart. In dogs and rabbits that have perished from a high temperature artificially produced by experimenters granular clouding of the elementary tissues has been found after death.8 A high temperature, therefore, in itself involves danger, and if it occur in an ataxic disease like scarlet fever, and be protracted, it greatly diminishes the chances of a favorable issue.
8 See experiments by Mr. J. W. Legg, Lond. Path. Soc. Trans., vol. xxiv., and others.
The temperature can be reduced without shock or injury to the child by the judicious use of cold water externally. The cold-water treatment is not necessary if the temperature be under 103°, though useful if judiciously employed by sponging when the temperature is at 102° or 103°; but if it rise above 103° it is required, and the more urgently the higher the temperature. The external use of cold water as an antipyretic in the febrile diseases is now almost universally recommended by physicians, but it still meets with opposition on the part of families, especially in the treatment of the exanthematic fevers, and the directions for its employment are therefore not apt to be fully carried out during the absence of the medical attendant. The old theory that the fevers require warmth and sweating has such a firm hold on the popular mind that some years longer will be required for its removal.
The modes of applying cold water recommended by cautious and experienced physicians are various. Von Ziemssen recommended that the patient be immersed in water at a temperature of 90°, and cool water be gradually added till the temperature fall to 77°. In a few minutes the patient is returned to his bed, his surface dried, and he is covered by the proper bed-clothes, when his temperature will probably be found reduced two or two and a half degrees. If the patient complain of chillness or his pulse be feeble, he should be immediately removed from the bath and stimulants administered, either whiskey or brandy, for if the extremities remain cool and the capillary circulation sluggish, the effect may be injurious, since some internal inflammation may arise to complicate the fever. Under such circumstances increased alcoholic stimulation is required.
The cold pack is also effectual for reducing the temperature. The patient is placed upon a mattrass protected by oil-cloth, and is covered by a sheet wrung out of water at a temperature of 70°. This is covered by one or two blankets. In half an hour he is returned to bed, and will be found to have a temperature two or three degrees less than that before the bath. Another method is to apply the sheet wrung out of water at 90°, and then reduce the temperature by adding water at a lower degree from a sprinkler. In most cases, however, I prefer to reduce the temperature by the constant application to the head of an india-rubber bag containing ice. The bag should be about one-third filled, so that it should fit over the head like a cap. At the same time, as a potent means of abstracting heat, at least when the temperature is at or above 104°, a similar application should be made by an elongated rubber bag lying over the neck and extending from ear to ear. Cold applied over the great vessels of the neck promptly abstracts heat from the blood, while it diminishes the pharyngitis, adenitis, and cellulitis; which is an important gain. At the same time, it is proper to sponge frequently the hands and arms with cool water. If the temperature with this treatment be not sufficiently reduced, one or two thicknesses of muslin frequently wrung out of ice-water should be placed along the arms and upon either side of the face. By such local measures, which are agreeable to the patient and without any shock or perturbing effect on the system, we can reduce the temperature two or three degrees. By adding alcohol or one of the alcoholic compounds to the water the popular objection to the use of cold is overcome.
Trousseau, in the treatment of sthenic cases attended by a high temperature, was in the habit of placing the patient naked in a bath-tub and directing three or four pailsful of water to be thrown over him in a space of time varying from one quarter of a minute to one minute, after which he was returned to bed and covered by the bed-clothes without being dried. Reaction immediately occurred, often with more or less perspiration. This treatment was repeated once or twice daily, according to the gravity of the symptoms. Trousseau, alluding to this treatment, says: "I have never administered it without deriving some benefit." But the application of cold water in a manner that does not excite or frighten the patient seems preferable. Henoch, having a large experience, gives the following advice in reference to the water treatment: "If the fever continue high and the apparently malignant symptoms described above develop, the head should be covered with an ice-bag, ... and the child placed in a lukewarm bath, not under 25° R. (88.25° F.). I decidedly oppose cooler baths, because in scarlatina, which presents a tendency to heart-failure, cold may produce an unexpected rapid collapse more than in any other affection. But I strongly recommend washing the entire body every three hours with a sponge dipped in cool water and vinegar."9 In grave cases with a high temperature the application of cold should be sufficient to produce a decided reduction of heat, otherwise the full benefit from its use is not obtained. With proper stimulation and proper precautions prostration does not occur from the ice-bags to the head and neck and cool sponging of other parts, so long as the temperature does not fall below 102° or 103°. The danger alluded to by Henoch can only occur from the use of the pack or general bath, and the water treatment can be efficiently carried out and the temperature sufficiently reduced without resorting to these. Even Currie of Edinburgh, who first drew attention to the benefit from the cold-water treatment of scarlet fever in an age when the sweating treatment, and even the exclusion of cool and fresh air from the apartment, were deemed necessary, recommended cold affusion only in sthenic cases with full and strong pulse, and he mentions as a warning two cases with quick and feeble pulse and cool extremities in which death occurred immediately after the use of the water.
9 Diseases of Children.
Sodium salicylate is in some instances a useful remedy for the reduction of heat in the infectious diseases. It seems to be more decidedly antipyretic than quinine in the febrile and inflammatory diseases, though somewhat depressing to the heart's action. James Couldrey writes to the London Lancet (Dec., 1882, p. 1064) that he has derived great benefit from its use in seven cases of scarlet fever. He administered it every two hours till ringing in the ears was produced, and afterward every four hours, prescribing one grain for each year in the age of the patient. It is, in my opinion, a proper remedy when the pulse is full and strong and the temperature is not sufficiently reduced by the cold-water treatment.
Aconite and veratrum viride reduce fever, but they are too depressing to be safely employed in grave scarlet fever, and their antipyretic effect is less than that of water. The use of digitalis might be suggested by the quick and feeble pulse in certain cases that are attended by high temperature, but the judgment of the profession is for the most part against its use in such cases. What Stillé and Maisch state of its employment in typhoid fever appears equally applicable to scarlet fever: "Even its advocates have not shown that it abridges the disease or lessens its mortality, while it is abundantly demonstrated to impair the digestion, reduce the strength, and even to occasion sudden death. The use of digitalis in other forms of fever is equally unsatisfactory, and justifies the judgment of Traube, that the true field of action for digitalis is not fever."
Quinine is the medicine which above all others has been heretofore most used, by almost common consent of the profession, to reduce the temperature in malignant scarlet fever, but its use for this purpose is, according to my observations, far from satisfactory. To obtain its antipyretic action it must be administered in large doses, and if any of the quinine salts in ordinary use be administered by the mouth in sufficient quantity, they are apt to be vomited. To a child of five years five grains should be administered twice daily by the mouth, or ten grains of a soluble salt, as the bisulphate, may be given per rectum, dissolved in a little warm water. Administered per rectum, it is frequently not retained unless held for a time by a napkin. A considerable proportion of the malignant cases are attended by not only irritability of the stomach, already alluded to, but by diarrhoea, so that quinine, if administered at all, should be employed hypodermically. The double salt of quinia and urea answers for this purpose, as it is very soluble in water and does not produce inflammation of the connective tissue. When the antipyretic doses of quinine are discontinued, this agent may be prescribed as a tonic in the doses recommended for the treatment of mild scarlet fever.