ELECTROCARDIOGRAPHIC STUDIES IN INFECTIOUS DISEASES: II. SCARLET FEVER

There are many points of similarity between scarlet fever and rheumatic fever.

The streptococcus plays an important rôle in both diseases. G. F. Dick and G. H. Dick¹ showed that the streptococcus is the specific organism in scarlet fever. Since 1900, when Poynton and Paine² described the diplostreptococcus as the specific organism in rheumatic fever, many workers (Rosenow,³ Faber,₄ Swift and Kinsella⁵ and Small⁶) have described one or another strain of the streptococcus group as an etiologic agent in that disease.

Escherich and Schick⁷ and Swift⁸ suggested that many of the symptoms occurring in scarlet fever—adenopathy, recurrent angina, arthritis and simple endocarditis—are allergic in nature. Experimental studies by Swift and his co-workers,⁹ Mackie and McLachlan¹⁰ and Zinsser and Grinnel¹¹ seem to point to the fact that the allergic phenomena in scarlet fever are an expression of hypersensitivity to Streptococcus