Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 December 1874 — How to Limit the Spread of Scarlatina. [ARTICLE]

How to Limit the Spread of Scarlatina.

At the present time, says the London Lancet , there is a considerable amount of zymotic disease prevalent, and we have been visited with a severe epidemic of scarlatina, which, however, is sensibly abating. There is no more infectious malady than this, and very few, if any, more dangerous or more likely to cripple a young life by its immediate and remote eflects on the health. The poison is, as every one knows, of a very subtle and infectious —character; —and~ there is no reason —at least no valid reason—for supposing that scarlatina arises spontaneously, although its occasional development and recurrence as an epidemic Tire vastly influenced by certain conditions over which we can exercise no control, and about which our knowledge is relatively inexact. Of one thing, however, we are well assured, namely, that our etlbrts must he directed to limiting the spreudof the infection by a rigid system of inspection, isolation, and disinfection. A youth returns to a school with the disease on him in a slight and unsuspected form, or ready to manifest itself, or when apparently quite recovered from an attack. Once scarlatina is introduced in this way, unless it be speedily detected and the proper measures at once adopted, the results are very disastrous. The authorities at most of our large schools are so well aware of the fact that great care is taken to guard against these occurrences, or to detect and meet them as soon as possible. It is to be feared, however; now that education is compulsory, that much unsuspected evil arises from this source in the large schools of our towns and cities. It has been observed, and not without a good deal of cogency, that while we take every precaution for the educational inspection of schools, and for securing a due amount of cubic space and ventilation for the pupils, we take none for their medical inspection, for the detection and immediate separation of cases of infectious fevers. In large day shools’ it would probably be impracticable to secure a thoroughly efficient system of medical inspection, in consequence of the frequency of inspection ana the number of inspectors that would be requiredr But we could wish that all classes of the community were better acquainted than they are with the power they possess of stamping out a disease like scarlatina by a uniform and systematic method of procedure. The suf serer should be isolated at once, his clothes disinfected by dry heat in an oven, or by being boiled, or disinfected by chemicals and afterward washed and freely exposed to the air. The measures advocated by Dr. William Budd have the merit of being founded on a definite knowledge of-the object in view and of a practical way of attaining it. The oiling of the patient’s whole body, the provision of receptacles containing disinfectants in the sick-room for even-tiling which comes from the patient, or which he has used, the employment of disinfectants by the attendants for washing their hands; the use, in short, of the most scrupulous cleanliness —the confinement of the patieht „to bed until the process of desquamation has been completed and t£e use of warm baths during and subsequent to that process are all such definite and common-sense measures that no one should f*it to pursue them. All

books supplied to patients during their illness should be of a cheap kind in paper covers, so that they may, together with any toys used by them, be afterward burned. We think the plan suggested by the Health Officer at Liverpool a very good one for adoption, viz.: That any medical man in attendance on a case of scarlatina should report the circumstance, when the clothes and room would be disinfected by proper officers at the public expense.