Measles

Last week Washington was having its worst measles epidemic since 1921. In the White House, Granddaughter Eleanor Dall was almost over her attack but 555 other Washington children were put to bed with runny noses, watery eyes, coughs and fever. That was more than had had measles in all of 1933.

Washington was not the only spot on the U. S. health map that broke out last week in a sudden rash of measles which looked like a national epidemic. Latest weekly figures received by the U. S. Public Health Service showed Philadelphia with 1,418 cases against 92 in the same week last year, Baltimore with 411 to 3, St. Louis with 468 to 17, Salt Lake City with 506 to 1. San Francisco with 105 to 4. Boston, Cincinnati, Omaha, Memphis, Atlanta, Little Rock also held many a pimply, feverish face. The schools of Waterville, N. Y. were closed because of measles. Dancer Agnes de Mille, Hollywood-bound from England to act in one of her Uncle Cecil's cinemas, arrived in Manhattan with a well-developed case.

New York City's Health Commissioner Rice warned parents to beware of measles as a "very serious malady," but assured them that this is not a "measles year" in New York. In the first ten weeks of last year the city had 9.562 cases and 44 deaths, against 413 cases and two deaths for the same period this year. Last week Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles showed similar decreases from last year. Measles epidemics are purely local, run in cycles of two or three years. Best explanation of the cycle is that, having immunized most of a city's schoolchildren, measles does not strike again until a fresh, fairly large crop of children have come along. But, because an epidemic's end-cases are usually mild, some investigators think the causative virus may grow weak, need a year or two to regain virulence.

Few children, and they mostly under three years old, die of measles. Its chief danger lies in the fact that pneumonia may complicate it; tuberculosis, Bright's disease, heart disease, or serious eye trouble may follow. Last week health authorities were warning parents not to let their children out of bed too soon. In a week or so the pimply rash which appears on the third or fourth day is almost gone and the small patient wants to be up and at play. But that is the dangerous time.

When a child has been exposed to measles, most highly contagious of all diseases, a doctor should be called at once. He will draw 30 cc. of blood from an adult who has had the disease, preferably one of the child's parents. Injected with this, the child will have a mild case of measles, be henceforth immune. Should this be neglected and a child grow very ill it must have blood from someone who has just recovered from the disease. Last week Washington's Children's Hospital, announcing that ten children in its care faced death without such treatment, sent out a call for boy & girl convalescents willing to volunteer their blood.

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