The use of dietetic stimulants such as Dechmann’s Tonogen, Eubiogen and Plasmogen, is the same in these cases as has been mentioned in several places previously.
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As soon as the patient has made sufficient progress, he may receive more solid food.
The salivary digestion being improved, he may now be allowed several more substantial dishes of rice and groat, cooked partly in milk, partly in water and eaten with fruit juice. He may also have several kinds of green vegetables, like spinach, cauliflower, asparagus, comfrey, etc.
With additional increase in his strength, fresh fish, well prepared, is especially refreshing to a patient with light fever.
As to mental pabulum, in case of severe fever, I recommend for the patient absolute mental and physical rest; little talking, no noise, no visits, no disturbance of any kind. Within his system nature has to accomplish an enormous task to facilitate which complete quiet is essential. Just as he who has serious preoccupations needs quiet environment, so that his attention may be devoted to his thoughts, so also a patient in the throes of fever must relax all external considerations in deference to the struggle of the vital forces within. Whatever disturbance of mentality occurs has always prejudicial effects, such indeed as may in some cases cost the life all are seeking to save.
Scarlet fever is an exanthematous form of disease distinguished by a scarlet eruption of the skin. It produces marked symptoms in three localities, the skin the throat and the kidneys.
It is doubtful whether it can be conveyed from one person to another; at least nothing is known concerning the “contagium,” or germ of conveyance of infection,—according to the differential diagnosis of Dr. G. Kuhnemann, whose work on the subject is held to be authoritative. It is not to be denied that the disease may be carried by articles of clothing and by intermediary persons, who themselves are not suffering from it.
The incubation period—the time intervening between infection and eruption—during which the infected person is “sickening for” disease, varies from two to as much as eight days.
Chills, feverishness, headache, nausea and actual vomiting are the initial symptoms, and sore throat with difficulty in swallowing soon follow.
Inspection reveals the appearance of an acute throat inflammation, and the tip and sides of the tongue are red as a raspberry. A few hours later—or at most a day or two—the eruption appears; first in the throat, then on the face and chest. It begins with minute, bright red, scattered spots, steadily growing larger until they run together so that the entire skin becomes scarlet, being completely covered with them. Frequently the temperature in the evening ranges as high as from 103 deg. to 105 deg. Fahrenheit. Albumen is always found in the urine.