particularly in measles and scarlet fever, they recommend antiseptic
sprays for the nose and throat and antiseptic ointments, such as
carbolized vaseline for the skin when peeling or desquamation is going
on.

_Quarantine for scarlet fever._

Scarlet fever, while the most violent, is also the shortest lived, in
the majority of cases not more than three or four days, although the
full period of recovery is much longer. The peculiarity of this disease
lies in the abundant peeling which takes place usually from the entire
body and particularly from the hands and feet; in fact, in a number of
cases where the disease is light, the peeling from the hands and feet is
the only positive proof that the malady has been scarlet fever. During
this process of peeling contagion seems most active; therefore, although
recovery seems entire so far as the fever is concerned, the patient
should remain strictly isolated during this time. It is a slow process,
lasting from two to five weeks, and is very tiresome for the child who
feels perfectly well; yet, in the interests of other children, the child
must be kept strictly at home until at least a week after the last sign
has disappeared. It is also for the child's own sake very desirable to
observe this quarantine, since it is during this period of recovery that
most of the complications of scarlet fever occur, and if the patient is
kept under observation, either in his sick room or on some porch where
atmospheric exposure is not too great and where the child is certain to
eat nothing harmful, the chances for avoiding lung troubles and
digestive disturbances are minimized.

There is such a striking difference in the severity of cases of scarlet
fever that the name "scarletina" was for a long time applied to mild
cases with the feeling that possibly it represented an altogether
different disease. At the present time the disease is more intelligently
diagnosed, and while there is vast difference in the severity of the
sickness, it is all the same thing. Of the ordinary cases, about 5 per
cent terminate fatally; that is, in a village or a community where a
hundred cases occur, there would be five deaths. If the epidemic,
however, is of the severe form, a larger percentage of deaths occur,
often reaching 20 per cent of those affected. It has been noted that as
an epidemic progresses, the disease becomes more serious, and a
death-rate of only 5 per cent may, in the course of an epidemic last