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SCARLET FEVER.

There is seldom any occasion for medicine in the mild form ofthis disease. The patient ought, however, to keep within doors,to abstain from flesh, strong liquors, and cordials, and to drinkfreely of cool diluting liquors. If the fever run high, the bodymust be kept gently open by emollient clysters, or small doses ofnitre and rhubarb. A scruple of the former and five grains of thelatter may be taken thrice a-day, or oftener, if necessary.

Children and young persons are sometimes seized at the begin-ning of this disease with a kind of stupor and epileptic fits. Inthis case, the feet and legs should be bathed in warm water, alarge blister applied to the neck, and a dose of the syrup of poppiesgiven every night till the patient recovers.*

To determine gently to the surface of the body, it may, fromtime to time, be advisable to give the saline medicine with smalldoses of some antimonial.t

The scarlet fever, however, is not always of so mild a nature. Itis sometimes attended with putrid or malignant symptoms, inwhich case it is always dangerous. In the malignant scarletfever, the patient is not only affected with coldness and shivering,but with languor, sickness, and great oppression ; to these succeedexcessive heat, nausea, and vomiting, with a soreness of the throat ;the pulse is extremely quick, but small and depressed ; the breath-ing frequent and laborious ; the skin hot but not quite dry ; thetongue moist, and covered with a whitish mucus : the tonsils in-flamed and ulcerated. AVIien the eruption appears, it brings norelief; on the contrary, the symptoms generally grow worse, andfresh ones come on, as purging, delirium, &c.|

When this disease is mistaken for simple inflammation, andtreated with repeated bleedings, purging, and cooling medicines, itgenerally proves fatal. In those cases which manifest a disposi-tion to malignancy and putrescency, it will be advisable to givethe Peruvian bark in substance, decoction, or infusion, accordingas it may sit on the patient's stomach, along with the mineral as-cids, (particularly the muriatic) wine, and other antiseptics, fromthe commencement of the disease. The treatment must be, ingeneral, similar to that of the putrid fever, or of the malignant ul-cerous sore throat.

* Sydenham.

t Take Saline Draught.

Camphor Mixture, of each, 6 drs.

Tartarized Antimony,

gf-

Syrup of Orange Peel, I drm.

Make a draught, to be taken every fourhours.

Í (Edematous swellings of the ancles are not unfrequent after severe attacks of scar-let fever. Sometimes the dropsy becomes general, and destroys the patient. Theremedy for this species of dropsy consists in sharp purgatives of jalap and calomel.Light grains of the former with three of the latter may be given every second morning.Indeed it is from neglecting to keep the body sufficiently open during the disease, thatthis kind of dropsy most generally originates.