MEASLES (also called RITHEOLA and MOR mu), a contagious eruptive disease, fre quently epidemic, and sometimes dangerous be cause of its debilitating effects and tendency to end in inflammation of mucous membranes, such as pneumonia and enteritis. So-called black or malignant measles, occurring mostly in persons of very poor health, is usually fatal. Where frequently epidemic it is less likely to be severe, and where it attacks a community for the first time it has a high mortality. For instance, it was taken to the Fiji Islands by a British ship from Australia and swept away 40,000 out of 150,000 inhabitants. Although measles is a disease of childhood, adults are not exempt from it. As a rule it attacks an individual but once. The contagious principle exists in the breath and in exhalations from the skin, the tears, the nasal and bronchial secretions and the excretions. Clothing which has been in an infected atmosphere is liable to spread the dis ease. How long the contagium remains in in fected articles is not known. The disease may be divided into four stages, beginning with the stage of incubation, or the interval (varying from 7 to 21 days) between the date of infec tion and the outbreak of symptoms, that is, the stage of invasion. The symptoms are chilli ness, fever, pain in head, back and limbs, blood shot eyes, with intolerance of light, running of the eyes and nose, sneezing and a troublesome cough. About the fourth day an eruption or
rash appears (stage of eruption), first in the throat, then upon the face, trunk and extremi ties, as minute pinkish red spots, which coalesce into blotches more or less crescentic in shape, raised above the surface of the skin. The erup tion usually last about three or four days. Gradually disappearing (stage of decline), fever and catarrhal symptoms abate, and appetite re turns. The cough may remain for days. The patient should be kept in a warm, well-venti lated and fairly lighted room, should be given easily digested food and plenty of water. Treat ment should also regulate the bowels with saline medicines, and allay the severity of the cough with simple remedies. Severe symptoms re quire the attendance of the physician. Com plications may ensue in the shape of chronic inflammation of the tonsils, of laryngitis, of chronic Bright's disease and of otitis; but the most serious complication is that of broncho pneumonia, which occurs in about 25 per cent of cases of measles. Measles is contagious until the eruption has disappeared and all dead par ticles of skin have come away of themselves or have been washed off by tepid baths.