Why We Don't Fear Scarlet Fever

MY 1-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER recently got sick. She cried nonstop, she ran a fever, and her body broke out in a fiery red, spotty, measleslike rash.

- Chelsea Follett

But it wasn't measles. (Recent outbreaks notwithstanding, that disease is blessedly rare in the U.S., thanks to widespread vaccination.)

Alarmed by the spreading rash and worsening symptoms, I rushed my screaming toddler to an emergency room, where a doctor calmly diagnosed her with scarlet fever.

I thought I had misheard. Scarlet fever sounds like something from a different century.

Many people today are only vaguely familiar with the term from classic literature. Scarlet fever is prominently featured in the plots of many old books, such as Frankenstein, Little Women, The Velveteen Rabbit, and Little House on the Prairie. The disease is described in Anna Karenina as an inevitable part of life. Scarlet fever's prominence in fiction makes sense, given that many writers once had real-life experience with the illness. Little Women author Louisa May Alcott's sister died from it at age 22.

Yet scarlet fever, a scourge that has caused millions of deaths throughout history and that was once described as “agonizing” and “diabolical,” is now a mild illness. This formerly feared disease once sent countless children into isolation from their loved ones at so-called fever hospitals, where the young patients often contracted additional illnesses and died, separated from their families. Yet today a scarlet fever diagnosis is no cause for alarm. Modern medicine played an important part in that change, but there is more to the story.