1 INCREASED BODILY TEMPERATURE AND WASTE. 



ASIATIC CHOLERA. We are fortunate in this country in being 

 rarely visited by this Oriental epidemic. The precautions are the 

 same as in typhoid fever the source of danger being alike in 

 both cases. It is astonishing how small a quantity of intestinal 

 discharge in these disorders, especially in cholera, will taint the 

 water supply over a large area, which may mean death to 

 thousands. Dr Farr estimates that in cholera, if these fluid 

 discharges contain infecting particles in the same proportion as 

 blood corpuscles exist in healthy blood, forty-two millions of them 

 would be set adrift during the progress of a single case. 



SCARLET FEVER. There is perhaps not any other illness that 

 you are all more painfully familiar with than this fever. It is a 

 household experience, a troublesome one, which is regarded very 

 much as inevitable. 



Although no age is exempt, it is essentially a children's illness 

 attacking mostly between the ages of three and four, and the 

 risk lessens after the fifth year. Its poison is most active and 

 penetrating, and retains the power of infecting for indefinitely 

 lengthened periods. As nearly all the fluids and tissues partici- 

 pate in the attack, they may all infect, the skin by casting its 

 outer surface, the internal membranes by a like process, tainting 

 the secretions. Isolation, that is separation, is a necessary part 

 in the treatment of this fever. The worst cases are associated 

 with malignant sore-throat, which so far brings it into relation 

 with another very infectious malady, viz., DIPHTHERIA, the seat 

 of which is chiefly the throat and upper air passages, and the in- 

 fecting channels, the breath and expectoration. I have said that 

 these disorders are all marked by increased bodily heat. This 

 is, however, but one of the many symptoms which signalizes their 

 course. In most the heart's beats are doubled ; the blood courses 

 along the vessels with redoubled velocity ; the respirations are 

 doubled. The whole vital machinery is working under its highest 

 possible pressure. Bodily waste is more than doubled. In or- 

 dinary health our bodily substance breaks up, and is parted with 



