8. In the country, the well water should be boiled; one infected well may be the cause of the death of a score of beautiful children.
INCUBATION PERIODS
The incubation period of scarlet fever is from one to seven days.
Measles, ten to twenty days.
Whooping cough, from one to two weeks.
Chicken-pox, fourteen to sixteen days.
German measles, seven to twenty-one days.
Diphtheria, any time from one to twelve days.
Mumps, from one week to three weeks.
Of all the diseases, measles and chicken-pox are probably the most contagious. In scarlet fever and diphtheria, close contact is necessary for exposure, while whooping cough can actually be contracted in the open air, young babies being particularly susceptible.
TYPHOID FEVER
Typhoid fever is a disease of the small intestine. Typhoid germs accumulate in the little lymph nodes of the small intestines and that is the reason why we often have so many hemorrhages from the bowel—actual ulcerations take place—and if an ulcer is situated in the neighborhood of a blood vessel hemorrhage may result.
Typhoid fever begins rather insidiously with a slight debility and loss of appetite, but if a temperature record is kept the fever will be found to rise from one-half to a degree higher each day. A steady climb in the temperature curve is noted until the end of the first week, when it remains for a week, possibly 103 or 104 F. After one week it begins slowly to decrease and, if all goes well, the early part of the fourth week usually finds the temperature about normal. It is exceedingly important that the child be kept in bed during the entire course of the disease. The bed pan must be used at each bowel movement or urination.
First Week Treatment. During this week the child may feel quite well, but he should be kept in bed and sustaining treatments begun—such as wet-sheet packs and cold frictions to the skin (during which time there should always be external heat to the feet). The diet must be full and nourishing, but all pastries and "knicknacks" should be avoided. Abundance of fresh fruit that has been well washed before paring, eggs, pasteurized milk, baked potatoes, and toasted bread may be taken at regular periods—with an interval of not less than five hours between meals.
The bowels should be opened in the beginning of the disease with a liberal dose of castor oil, after which daily colonic irrigations should be employed. These enemas should be given at least once a day, the temperature being about that of the body, with a smaller terminal enema about five degrees cooler at the close of each bowel cleansing.