HOME HEALTH GUIDE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 September 1942, Page 6

HOME HEALTH GUIDE

INFECTIOUS DISEASES. PROMPT MEASURES EFFECTIVE. (By the Health Department.) Early detection, quick isolation, and prompt treatment of infectious diseases are essential if their spread is to be checked in future, and possibly serious complications avoided. Maintenance of bodily resistance by proper food and healthy habits, of course, is the best safeguard against infection of any kind, but there are times when the resistance breaks down, and it is then that a knowledge of the early symptoms is invaluable. Here, briefly, are the early indications of some common infectious diseases to which childhood particularly is prone: Measles: Onset with’ symptoms resembling cold in the head; running nose; inflamed eyes; sneezing and coughing. Rash appears on third day, first behind the ears, and then over the face and body. Incubation period (that is, time between exposure to infection and first appearance of symptoms) about 14 days.

Mumps: Sudden onset with slight fever. Pain and swelling in front of, and below one ear. Incubation period about 18 days. Scarlet Fever: Sudden onset, with sore throat, headache and fever; glands are enlarged. Pin-point rash appears within 24 hours on neck and upper chest. Incubation period about 5 days. Whooping Cough: Onset gradual, suggesting cold in the head; persistent cough develops; the characteristic cough, with whoop and vomiting, is often delayed. Incubation period-about seven days.

Diphtheria: A very serious disease. Onset gradual or rapid. The child feels, and looks, ill; has sore throat, generally with greyish patches on the surface of the throat, palate and tonsils. Sore throat may be only early symptom. Incubation period from two to five days.