ATYPICAL SCARLET FEVER


The mother undoubtedly had a typical scarlet fever and the child also had the disease in utero. She was very fortunate in having the disease before delivery and thereby eliminating the septic condition so often met in pregnant mothers at delivery if brought in contact with scarlet fever.


Read before the Annual Meeting of The International Hahnemannian Association, Philadelphia, July, 1926.

Scarlet fever usually is easily diagnosed, but it at times takes on a peculiar course. I am reporting these cases because of their unusual course and type of patients.

Mrs. W. F., a well-developed woman of twenty-eight years, was nursing two children with typical scarlet fever. She was over eight months pregnant. The pregnancy had been normal in every way.

Four days after the two patients she had cared for were removed from quarantine, Mrs. W. F. was taken with a chill, throbbing headache, nausea and vomiting. Temperature 104, pulse 140; no thirst. The throat was very sore, very red and puffy. In two days the soles of the feet and palms of the hands were covered with a scarlet rash perfectly smooth. No rash appeared elsewhere. Albumen was present in the urine. She made a good and quick recovery under Apis mel.

Twenty days after the illness started she had a normal labor and gave birth to an eight-pound girl babe, which was normal in every way, except that desquamation was taking place all over the body and legs, the cuticle rolling up in rolls leaving very red skin.

The mother undoubtedly had a typical scarlet fever and the child also had the disease in utero. She was very fortunate in having the disease before delivery and thereby eliminating the septic condition so often met in pregnant mothers at delivery if brought in contact with scarlet fever.

H.A. Roberts
Dr. H.A.Roberts (1868-1950) attended New York Homoeopathic Medical College and set up practrice in Brattleboro of Vermont (U.S.). He eventually moved to Connecticut where he practiced almost 50 years. Elected president of the Connecticut Homoeopathic Medical Society and subsequently President of The International Hahnemannian Association. His writings include Sensation As If and The Principles and Art of Cure by Homoeopathy.