A NEW DISEASE.

Bush Advocate, Volume XX, Issue 1028, 16 May 1908, Page 3

A NEW DISEASE.

A mysterious disease which has again broken oitt in the Stansted (Essex) district is baffling 1 the local doctors. Tho disease, which was first noted last year, was thought to bo scarlet fever until many of the patients deviated from the" normal course of that ailment. Dr Haynes, who first drew attention to the peculiarities of the new disease, has visited twelve cases in the present outbreak. Four of these have been in two families in- solitary farmhouses, with no children of school age to introduce the infection. In two other cases where children have been attacked the parents had had typical influenza during tho preceding week. These cases suggested that the disease might be an unusual form of influenza, which, while typical in adults, took the form of an evanescent eruptive fever in young children. The disease, like German measles, which it resembles more closely than any other of the eruptive fevers, is not markedly infectious; which peculiarity easily distinguishes it from measles and "scarlet fever. In one family the parents and three children all suffered from the. fever, while .three other children, not isolated and in the same house, escaped contagion. So fax most of the cases have been very mild. In some instances, where a profuse rash has suddenly appeared, together with five or six degrees of fever, slight sore throat, and nausea, all these symptoms have disappeared in twenty-four hours. Only one case had any catarrhal or cold-in-the-head symptoms so common in true measles and not rare in German measles. • The rash is said to be slightly more brick-colored than in scarlet fe>:er.; >j