Article originally published in The Owensboro Messenger on September 22, 1940. Full article text provided by Newspapers.com below.
May Be Great Aid In Army In Future; Disease Was Commonest Death Cause In World War.
Philadelphia, Pa., Sept. 21. — Success in vaccinating a small group of children against measles, widespread childhood ailment that often leads to pneumonia and serious ear trouble, has been achieved by Dr. Joseph Stokes, Jr., University of Pennsylvania Medical School, and Dr. Geoffrey Rake, Squibb Institute for Medical Research, New Brunswick, N. J.
Army officials as well as parents throughout the land will hail this promise of triumph over measles, announced at the University of Pennsylvania bicentennial conference here.
During the last World War, it was pointed out, measles became one of the commonest causes of death in the army. This was because thousands of country lads who had never had measles due to their relative degree of isolation during childhood contracted the disease after they got into Army training camps.
Many of them not only had measles but a severe and often fatal pneumonia as a complication of the measles.
The new anti-measles vaccine was made by growing the measles virus or germ on fertile hen’s eggs. Apparently the virus becomes weakened in this environment and produces a very mild type of measles in some children and no symptoms at all in others.
Two groups of children in New Jersey and Philadelphia, with the permission of their parents and health authorities, gave a new measles vaccine its first trials.
None of the children had ever had measles. One group was vaccinated and the other was not. Both groups were then given injections of measles virus from patients who had measles. The unvaccinated children came down with measles, but the vaccinated ones did not. This was most encouraging, but Dr. Stokes pointed out that the number of children in these trials of the vaccine was too small to be entirely sure of the value of the vaccine.
