The prevention of infectious diseases, being the Lane lectures delivered at Cooper Medical College, San Francisco, in August, 1906, and revised for publication / by John C. M'Vail.

John McVail

Date:: 1907

Credit: The prevention of infectious diseases, being the Lane lectures delivered at Cooper Medical College, San Francisco, in August, 1906, and revised for publication / by John C. M'Vail. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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$is often thought of and spoken of as a trivial incident of childhood. As a matter of fact, the disease „. ^ „ ^ ^ , , ■ Txr 1 . • High Mortality, kills in England and Wales more than twice as many people as does scarlet fever, more than twice as many as enteric fever, fully a half more than diphtheria, about twenty times as many as smallpox, and a hundred times as many as typhus fever. In England and Wales the deaths from measles have been from 6000 to 14,000 a year, and, as summed up by Dr. Theodore Thomson ^ from the Registrar General's reports, they reached the enormous total of 367,602 in the forty years ending 1887. ir 1 (5 70 I V 7 >F1 „ 7 7 19 }q i t 1 0 >t> t I 1 PO n [- 7- 0 r r fi K) .J « 5 X) • « I*- # • * • A. 1' • w - V \ • • * • • 0^ ■^ / \ — T • iij <!0 • (- • a. 1 V • ; V) Ui 1- T DO < a T t » 1 t f t T t T T ye ar 1 R! ] R( 9 1' ^6 5 1 J, y 1 0 7/ 3 9 19 r f 0 MEASLES—DEATH RATE PER MILLION, 1855 TO I905. England and Wales—interrupted curve. Scotland—continuous curve. I see that in the United States in a single year (1900) there were 12,000 deaths. Measles, then, is a most serious and dangerous disease. The cause of its high mortality is not its high fatality. It is not a very mortal disease. Though the fatality varies in different epidemics and in different circum- stances, it averages, perhaps, only 3 to 6 per Fatality, cent. In Edinburgh in the decade 18S1-90, when the disease was notifiable, it killed from 1.5 to 6 per cent, of those attacked, the average being 3 per cent. Deaths from measles are mainly due to complications, especially to catarrhal inflammation of the respiratory passages. And here there is good evidence that vitiation of atmosphere ^ Engli.sh Local Government Board, Medical Officer's Report for 1894-95 page 137.$