Diseases > Domestic medicine

■244 btjchan’s
Children and young persons are sometimes seized
at the beginning of this disease with a kind of stupor
and epileptic fits. In this case the feet and legs
should be bathed in warm water, a large blistering-
plaster applied to the neck, and a dose of the syrup
of poppies given every night till the patient recovers.
The scarlet fever however is not always of so mild a
■nature. It is sometimes attended with putrid or
malignant symptoms, in which case it is always
dangerous. In the malignant scarlet fever, the pa¬
tient is not only affected with coldness and shivering,
but with languor, sickness, and great oppression ; to
these succeed excessive heat, nausea, and vomiting,
with a soreness of the throat; the pulse is extremely
quick, but small and depressed; the breathing fre
quent and laborious ; the skin hot, but not quite dry
the tongue moist, and covered with a whitish mucus
the tonsils inflamed and ulcerated. When the erup¬
tion appears, it brings no relief; on the contrary, th?
symptoms generally grow worse, and fresh ones come
on, as purging, delirium, &c.
When this disease is taken for a simple inflamma¬
tion, and treated with repeated bleedings, purging
and cooling medicines, it generally proves fatal. The
only medicines that can be depended on in this case,
are cordials and antiseptics, as the Peruvian bark,
wine, snake root, and the like. The treatment must
be in general similar to that of the putrid fever, or of
the malignant ulcerous sore throat. In the year
1774, during winter, a very bad species of this fever
prevailed in Edinburgh. It raged chiefly among
young people. The eruption was generally accom¬
panied with a quinsey, and the inflammatory symp¬
toms were so blended with others of a putrid nature,
as to render the treatment of the disease very difficult.
Many of the patients, towards the decline of the