44 ILLINOIS STATE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 



THE YEAR'S PROGRESS IN PUBLIC HEALTH 

 AND MEDICINE 



W. A. Evans, M. D., Health Editor, Chicago Tribune 



When you listen to a report on the progress of public 

 health and medicine given before a meeting of this char- 

 acter and made by myself, you expect to hear more about 

 progress in preventive medicine than you do about the 

 second subject. My excuse for slighting medicine in 

 favor of preventive medicine is that I am more interested 

 in public health. 



SCARLET FEVER 



Two fundamental, scientific facts have been known for 

 some time. The first was that some one or more of the 

 streptococci were concerned in the symptomatology of 

 scarlet fever. As to the causative relations of the 

 streptococcus there were two schools. One held that this 

 strepococcus was the cause of the disease. The other 

 held that streptococci were so nearly obiquitous and 

 caused so many diseases that they could not be the speci- 

 fic cause of scarlet fever. This school held that the spe- 

 cific cause was some unknown organism, but that the 

 streptococci contributed materially to the symptoms. The 

 theory upheld by Bristol that the rash of scarlet fever 

 was an anaphylactic phenomenon for which streptococci 

 was the bacterial cause, lent more support to this side 

 of the question than it did to others. 



Dr. Dochez, by the use of certain culture methods, 

 demonstrated the one variety of streptococcus which he 

 claimed could produce the disease, and in that way 

 seemed to establish the primacy of the streptococcus as 

 the etiologic agent and, at the same time, to answer the 

 point made by Jochmann that an organism which was so 

 widespread and caused so many diseases could not be the 

 specific cause of scarlet fever. 



Doctors George F. and Gladys H. Dick proved that a 

 certain strain of streptococcus grown from the throats 

 of persons having scarlet fever, when injected into sus- 

 ceptible human beings, produced a disease" with the symp- 

 toms of scarlet fever. They extracted a toxin from this 



