Scarlet Fever

The present scarlet fever season /- was an opportune time for two German investigators at Wiesbaden last week to announce that they had isolated the scarlet fever bacillus.

Scarlet fever begins with a sore throat. Fine, bright red dots appear on the neck. under the chin. The redness spreads over the entire body, except around the mouth which becomes a clownish white. The infection frequently spreads to the inner ears and kidneys, causing great trouble. Upon convalescence the skin scales and peels off. Children between two and ten years are most susceptible. They catch it usually from infected children breathing moistly in their faces.

Although scarlet fever has been recognized as a distinct disease since 1675 (by Thomas Sydenham), not until January, 1923, was a single case developed experimentally in man or lower animal. Then Dr. George Frederick Dick and his wife Dr. Gladys Henry Dick of Chicago took a hemolytic streptococcus (blood-dissolving bacilli) from a lesion in the finger of an infected nurse and injected the germs into a 25-year-old woman. She developed scarlet fever. The Dicks developed a scarlet fever antitoxin. Last week's Germans, Professors Heinrich Finkelstein and Fritz Meyer of Berlin, claimed to have found the specific hemolytic streptococcus in the mucous membranes of the infected pharynx,* and from it developed a specific immunizing antitoxin.

* Back of the fauces (narrow, rear part of mouth) is the pharynx. Into the pharynx enter (from above) the nostrils and eustachian tubes. From below enter (in front) the larynx (top part of the trachea, or breathing tube), and (in back) the esophagus or food tube. In eating or drinking the epiglottis, a saddle-shaped piece of cartilage at the root of the tongue, flaps down to cover the larynx and windpipe. The term "throat" includes fauces and pharynx; the term "gullet" includes pharynx and esophagus./- 5,685 U. S. cases reported last week.