Swindell, 1
Scarlet fever is a serious disease that can boil one’s brain resulting in serious brain
damage or, even worse, miserable death. When the body’s temperature rises to 105° fahrenheit
or higher brain damage or death can occur. Scarlet fever can lead to other serious complications
if it is not treated properly. Such complications include but are not limited to; meningitis,
pneumonia, and flesh-eating bacteria, as well as serious skin problems. Scarlet fever is not a
disease a person would want to mess around with, if one doesn’t get proper treatment for this
disease there can be many complications that can occur. The public should be more aware of
scarlet fever’s symptoms because it is highly contagious but can be cured with modern day
antibiotics.
On June 27, 1880, a healthy baby girl was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama (“Helen Adams
Keller,” 1). When she was 19 months old, she became ill with a very high fever which the
family doctor described as “brain fever” (“Helen Adams Keller,” 1). As a result, the child’s
mother noticed that she didn’t respond to the dinner bell like she used to and realized that the
child had become deaf and blind (“Helen Adams Keller,” 1). This child, Helen Keller, became a
very well known woman in history. Many scientists believed that the cause of her illness, which
lead to her becoming blind and deaf, was from scarlet fever (“Helen Adams Keller,” 1).
Scarlet fever got its name from the scarlet color rash that develops once a person is
infected. Scarlet fever, also known as “Scarlatina”, was studied and named by Thomas
Sydenham (1624-1689) (“Scarlet Fever,” The Gale Encyclopedia of Medicine, 1). Thomas
Sydenham was an English physician who kept thorough records of patients and compared their
symptoms to discover the differences between measles and scarlet fever, once thought to be the
same disease (“Scarlet Fever,” The Gale Encyclopedia of Medicine, 1). Many different people
Swindell, 2
have researched scarlet fever and found that it is highly contagious and can develop in a few
different ways. Once the disease was linked to streptococcus in the early 1900’s, it was found
that it was easily treated by antibiotics. People most-likely feared scarlet fever up until the mid
1900’s since not many antibiotics were around back then. Scarlet Fever can also be confused
with measles or diphtheria (“Scarlet Fever”, American Decades Primary Sources, 2). All three
of these diseases have numerous common symptoms, that is why they often get confused.
Scarlet fever can be spread incredibly easy, which is why one should be careful since
children under the age of ten are most likely to catch the disease. Parents need to pay a close
attention to what their kids do, who they eat after and what they drink. For instance, scarlet fever
can easily be spread by sneezing or coughing on someone while one is infected (Jacobs, 3rd ed.
