Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 April 1878 — Scarlet Fever and Diphtheria. [ARTICLE]

Scarlet Fever and Diphtheria.

These dreadful diseases have all times and places for their own, any suggestions for avoidance and of precaution are never out of place. This prompts us to reprint in our columns the following recommendations, in a circular from the Brooklyn Board of Health, called out by the prevalence of these diseases in that city, for their sanitary treatment. “Scarlet ftjyer and diphtheria are like small-pox in their power to spread rapidly from person to person; they are highly coutageous. When scarlet fever or diphtheria occurs, sick persons should be placed in a room apart from the other inmates of the house, and should be nursed by as few persons as possible. The sick room should be comfortably warm, exposed to sunlight, aud well aired. At .he cominencement of the sickness only such furniture, bedding, clothes, &c., as are absolutely necessary should be left in the room. Carpets and window curtains should especially be removed, as the germs of disease find a lodgment in them, aud are difficult to displace. The family should not mingle with other people. The clothing and bedding of nurss and patient should be frequently changed, and after being moistened with a solution of carbolic acid, placed in boiling water for one hour.’ No other clothing or bedding should be washed at the same time with that which is infected. The clothing and bedding while in use, and the carpets, floors, walls, and ceilings, and the halls of the house should be sprinkled once or twice a day during sickness and convalescence wish a solution of carbolic acid. When the patient has recovered, the walls of the room should be rubbed with a dry doth, burned at once without shaking. The ceiling should be scraped and whitened. The floor should be washed be washed with soap and hot water, and carbolic acid added to the water (one pint to three i gallons.) for the purpose of fumigating, the I windows and doors of the room and the flreplaee should be tightly closed. Everything that was in the room during the sickness should be left in it. If the carpet was not removed, it should be taken up and raised as far as possible from the floor on chairs, or in any other manner; one board of the floor should be taken up."

There is danger in scarlet fever as long as there is any roughness or peeling off of the skin, and diphtheria until the patient is declared free of the disease by the physician. The Sauitory code of Brookly forbids public funerds in case of death 1 from these diseases, and requires a thorough inspection, and if necessary a quarantine of the premises where they do occur. From the New York Sun we quote the ennexed paragraphs bearing upon this topic, and suggst that this whole matter be preserved by the reader against the evil day, (and may it never come), any of their households may be invaded by either of them: “Ignorant persons often have the funeral services conducted in the room in whch the patient died, and with the coflin open. They even bend over and kiss the infected corpse. Thirty or forty persons are thus exposed to contagion, and the practice has proved u fruitful source of disease. Kissing the sick-'Children is a! great, mistake—a surer way of catch- • ing the infection could not be devised. This is an important point, as the great majority of cases being among children, their parents aie apt to sonI die them. The kiss may not infect i the parent, but tne infection may ' thereby be carried to the next child. In regard to medical treatment of diphtheria there is much disagreement. Some favor local applications, others dose their patients. Dr. E. N. Chapman, an old physician of Brooklyn, who has devoted many years to the study of diphtheria, and who has had much success in his practice recommends the administration of alAlchohol, he says, is a poison antagonistic to the poison of diphtheria. He avers that the percentage of deaths can be reduced to one in fifty. It neutralizes, he says, the diphtheritic poison, sets free the nerves of animal life, subdues the fever and inflamtnaj tion, destroys the pabulum that sustains that membrane, rind cuts short i the disease. Like any other antidote ! it must be given promptly at the out--1 set. It does not as a stimulant, nor ; produce any of its ordinary effects, i Dr. Chapman sustains his position by ■ citing numerous cases in which this i treatment has been successful. He , says that during the past winter he i has only lost one ease out of forty.”