Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 May 1886 — Treatment of Scarlet Fever. [ARTICLE]

Treatment of Scarlet Fever.

The last stage of scarlet fever, that of desquamation or the time of the shedding of the cuticle, is attended with danger both for the patient and the attendants! the patient is peculiarly liable to complications arising from taking cold easily, aud the desquamative scales are a frequent and most certain source of contagion to those about thb patient A writer in a British medical journal says: “Now, to obviate this danger, I have for several years been ‘in tho habit of having my patients sponged over the whole surface of the body twice a day — commencing, os a rule, about a week from the appearance of the eruption, and continuing tho process until the desquamation is complete—with a mixture of one ounce of oatmeal to one pint of boiling water: the solution to be made fresh every day and used tepid, or at such temperature as may be comfortably borne by the back of the finger. My reason for using this is that the gluten in it sticks the scales to each other and to tlio surface of the body, thus allowing‘of tlieir being removed from one sponging to another, without the ordinary risk of infecting either atmosphere or clothes, and greatly lessening the risk of spreading the disease. Secondly, the gluten fills up the cracks of the new skin, and protects it from the cold, as patch by patch it becomes hare, and thus, to say the least, greatly lessens the risk of dropsy, which so often follows upon this disease.”— Dr. Foote's Health Monthly.