In the spring of 1907, measles wasn’t a distant memory of childhood — it was actively moving through Evansville, Indiana, one household at a time. City health officials counted 947 reported cases in just the first five months of the year, and the city’s health secretary, Dr. J. Y. Welborn, estimated that by April 1 alone, roughly 3,000 children had already been through it. Those numbers were almost certainly an undercount: the article notes that many families never bothered reporting a case or calling a doctor at all, since measles was widely treated as an ordinary, unavoidable rite of childhood rather than something to guard against.
That casualness is what the piece pushes back against. It walks through what a case of measles actually looked like in 1907 — the fever, the rash, the week-plus recovery window — and what could go wrong afterward: ear abscesses and hearing loss, permanent eye damage, bronchitis sliding into pneumonia, or worse, tuberculosis. Death from measles itself was considered rare (the city recorded none that year, against six fatalities during an 853-case outbreak in 1900), but the lasting damage from complications was common enough that health officers spent real time and money on it — disinfecting over 700 sickrooms with burning sulphur or formaldehyde gas in just those five months. No one in 1907 had any real answer for prevention beyond quarantine and disinfection; a workable vaccine was still decades away.
View original article “Have You Had the Measles At Your House Yet?” Evansville Courier and Press (June 9, 1907).
MEASLES, the apparently harmless disease which a good many people think the human frame is a dead certain heir to and cannot avoid having, has visited a thousand Evansville homes within the past month or so. A total of 947 cases was reported for the five months of 1907 ending May 31. Hundreds of families never report measles to the health authorities of the city or engage the services of a physician, thus many of the cases are never recorded.
“I think the present epidemic of measles, which got a good start by April 1, has given 3,000 children the right to say ‘I’ve had ’em and over with it,'” said Dr. J. Y. Welborn, city health secretary, yesterday.
Children from two to fourteen years old are more susceptible to measles than others. According to the city health officers the epidemic now in progress is catching a good number of people from 20 to 50 years old. Deaths caused directly by measles are rare. None have died from the disease this year. In 1900, when an epidemic raged in the city there were 853 cases of measles and six fatalities. Two deaths were reported as caused by measles in 1904 when 266 cases of measles were reported for the year.
Measles, however, stand next to scarlet fever as a cause of death in children, because of lung complications that arise during the measles sickness of children. Like many other diseases which in themselves are not thought very harmful, the undoubted effects of measles makes many people injured for life. After measles, prominent physicians say, it is not uncommon to have abscesses in the ear, sometimes resulting in deafness, also sore eyes which may affect the eyesight permanently. Catarrh and partial paralysis seldom follow measles.
Of the diseases which may follow measles, consumption is the most common and most to be feared. The most dangerous complication is inflammation of the fine air tubes, causing broncho-pneumonia. Though usually given little attention by most parents measles is at once one of the most dreaded though seemingly harmless diseases that children are subject to. It should not be trifled with and feared.
An Old Fallacy
Our grandmothers contended and some present day mamas believe that “every person must some time have the measles and it is best to have it in childhood.” A great many living examples to explode this theory can be found everywhere and the class is constantly growing.
Sixty to eighty years ago people generally believed that everyone must have scarlet fever some time in their life, and therefore when the scarlet fever started in a community many unknowing mothers deliberately exposed their well children in order that they might have the scarlet fever and be over with it. Like measles, only more dangerous, scarlet fever is to be avoided. No disease yet discovered is of benefit to the body.
No positive cause for measles has been assigned by the medical authorities. The common belief among physicians is that measles is caused by a protozoan (a minute animal) which always comes from some other human being in which it was growing. There is no end to the manner by which they can be transferred from one person to another and in their quick and easy mode of becoming circulated is the secret of an epidemic. As measles are a germ disease proper disinfectants will successfully combat with the spread of the disease.
In the colder months when more people stay indoors measles is more prevalent. The cause of the spring epidemic during April and May of this year is traced to the effect of the cool and inclement weather in causing people to stay indoors and not properly ventilating their houses. The better the sanitary conditions of a district the less measles will be found. Proper treatment of a case of measles will also serve to check an epidemic.
Symptoms of Measles
A rising fever and slight itching followed by small reddish specks appearing on the skin are the symptoms of measles. From a week to ten days is required for the disease to fully assert itself and disappear. Usually three days see the disease well over, but the getting-well stage, which takes the remainder of the week or ten days, is really more important than the period the disease is active. The patient should be kept in bed a few days after the fever goes down, and the skin well sponged with oil each day. The patient should have good care and company, so that he will not get lonesome and want to get up. Then the child will not be so likely to contract pneumonia or consumption, because, as his mother says, “the child, poor thing, caught cold after measles.” It is not best to let the measles patient get out of bed until thoroughly recovered, and no disease should be so closely watched by the doctor and mother than measles in the convalescent stage.
Disinfect the Sick Room
Sick rooms where measles patients have been confined should be well disinfected after the patient has recovered. A state law provides that all rooms which have been occupied with persons sick of germ diseases shall be promptly disinfected, but in many cities the town councils will not appropriate money to carry on this work, hence the fearful results of measles among the poorer classes in some cities.
The local health officials have been active during the present epidemic, disinfecting over 700 rooms in the past five months. Many rooms, because the presence of measles is never reported to the proper authorities, are never disinfected, however.
Two of the most common disinfectants are used by the local health authorities. They are called the “sulphur disinfection” and the “formaldehyde disinfection.” Without proper preparation of a room before disinfection the desired result may not be obtained. The room should be made as air-tight as possible, even pasting wetted or gummed paper over small crevices in the walls, cracks in transoms and doors and tightly sealing up the windows. Books should be opened, closet doors opened, trunks opened and bedclothes spread on chairs, or better still, suspended from a wire or cord across the room.
One of the essential things to do a good job of disinfecting is that the air in the room must be damp; it is absolutely necessary that the air must be damp. Dampness can be produced by boiling water, by pouring boiling water from a tea kettle into some other vessel and letting the steam escape or by first boiling stones or bricks and placing them in the room to be disinfected.
The amount of disinfectant to be used is determined by the number of “unit spaces” in a room. To get “unit spaces” in a room multiply the length, breadth and height together, which will give the number of cubic feet in the room. Dividing this number by 1,000 gives the number of thousand cubic feet in the room, or the number of “unit spaces.” In a room the dimensions of which, say, were 18x18x9 feet there would be approximately three and one-quarter “unit spaces.”
Because of its cheapness and simple formula the “sulphur disinfection” is most commonly used by those who disinfect their own rooms. The formaldehyde formula requires some laboratory apparatus to mix and it is used only by health boards.
As given by Sanitary Officer Casey the method of mixing and applying the “sulphur disinfection” is as follows: For each “unit space,” or 1,000 cubic feet in the room, weigh out three pounds of common (rolled) sulphur and place in an iron kettle or dishpan, which stands in a tub containing two inches or more water. The placing of the kettle or pan in the water is to guard against fire. Now dampen the sulphur in a spot not larger than a silver dollar with alcohol or coal oil and apply a match.
Leave the room immediately and see that every keyhole and crack leading into the room is stopped. The room should remain closed from six to ten hours, the longer period the better. When the time is up, the windows should be opened, as well as doors that lead to the outside of the house, and the room thoroughly aired. The room and contents may now be considered free from infection, but the carpet and bedclothes must be hung in the open air to be rid of the sulphur smell. The woodwork, bedsteads, chairs and stands should be washed with soap and water, completing the disinfecting.
