Definition of "scarlet fever" []

• An acute contagious disease caused by a hemolytic streptococcus, occurring predominantly among children and characterized by a scarlet skin eruption and high fever. Also called scarlatina. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Whatever it might be, it was not gaol fever, the malignant quinsy, typhoid, scarlet fever or the smallpox; a whisper began that it was the Black Death—hadn’t that produced hideous buboes?"
• "Yet, although we "nose" the murderers, in the musty unaired unsunned room, the scarlet fever which is behind the door, or the fever and hospital gangrene which are stalking among the crowded beds of a hospital ward, we say, "It's all right.""
• "He went into the details of the treatment in his dry Scots way-something to do with scarlet fever anti-toxin, which I have forgotten now."