250 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The majority of the above-named symptoms will almost invariably 

 indicate the presence of a febrile state. 



Any child kept at home away from school for a week or more by 

 its parents should, before returning to its school, bring a certificate of 

 health, signed by a duly qualified medical practitioner. 



Infectious Febrile Diseases. Small-pox is rarely found in 

 those schools where vaccination is enforced, as the majority of vacci- 

 nated children have not yet lost the protective influence of primary vac- 

 cination. "Whenever possible, the teacher should have all the children 

 over ten years revaccinated, especially in times of epidemic small-pox. 

 The popular assertion, that, during epidemics of small-pox, revaccina- 

 tion tends further to develop small-pox, is absolutely false. 



Small-pox sets in with fever, vomiting, and pains in the loins. Aftei 

 not less than two days, but most frequently on the third day of the 

 illness, there appears commencing on the face an eruption of raised 

 spots, more or less numerous, which pass later into pimples or pustules, 

 having a depressed or navel-like center. These spots terminate in 

 scabs, which should have completely disappeared before the child is 

 allowed to return to school. Before readmission to the school the 

 child should have had two or three baths. 



Chicken-pox is a mild disease, occasionally preceded by fever. It 

 is characterized by successive crops of blebs, preceded by red-colored 

 spots, each new crop being apt to appear toward evening, and is gen- 

 erally accompanied with some accession of slight fever. Chicken-pox 

 is characterized by pea-sized blebs, or blisters, filled with a transparent 

 watery liquid, which soon becomes thick, muddy, or bloody, and ter- 

 minates with scabs. Where the spots on the body are neither numer- 

 ous nor well marked, the eruption is invariably observed among the 

 hair of the head. 



Measles is ushered in with general indisposition, fever, sneezing, 

 weeping, and red eyes, loud noisy cough ; occasionally there may be 

 bleeding from the nose and passing diarrhoea. After three or four 

 days' illness, sometimes sooner, an eruption shows itself, first on the 

 chin and face in small, irregular rose-red spots, slightly elevated, which 

 soon spread over the surface of the body, leaving more or less pale, 

 irregular patches of skin unattacked. The complaint is highly conta- 

 gious. Children with measles, when kept at home, and not exposed to 

 the chance of catching cold, generally do well. 



Scarlet fever commences with extreme general indisposition, high 

 fever, a dry, burning skin, pains about the throat, and vomiting. Gen- 

 erally toward the end of the first day's illness, sometimes even at the 

 very outset, a child, but a few minutes before in apparent good health, 

 presents itself with a raspberry-red blush or rash, which may either 

 cover the body completely or else appear here and there in patches. 

 The face, the interior of the thighs, the groins, and the neighborhood 

 of the joints are favored situations for the rash. At first glance the 



