MEASLES, SCARLET FEVER, MUMPS, DENGUE FEVER, ETC. 923 



shown by Hektoen's experiments that the virus of measles may be kept 

 alive for at least twenty-four hours when mixed with ascitic broth. 



Similar experiments were recently carried out by Sellards, both 

 on monkeys and on eight volunteers, but entirely without success. 



More important than the blood transfer experiments from the 

 point of view of transmission are experiments in which inoculation 

 has been attempted with secretions from the nose and throat. In 1852 

 Mayer reported the successful inoculation of human beings with mucus 

 from the noses and throats of early measles cases, but complete failure 

 in similar attempts at transfer with skin desquamations following the 

 rash. Anderson and Goldberger 3 claimed in 1911 that they were able to 

 produce temperature reactions and mild skin changes in monkeys by 

 the injection of nasal and pharyngeal secretions from early cases. This 

 work has been recently elaborated and brought to more convincing 

 conclusions by Blake and Trask. 4 These writers inoculated monkeys 

 (Macacus Rhesus) intratracheally with filtered and unfiltered wash- 

 ings from patients in the early eruptive stages of measles and showed 

 that the lesion which developed in the skin and buccal mucous mem- 

 brane during the course of the monkey infection was histologically 

 almost identical with that found in human measles. They successfully 

 transmitted the infection from monkey to monkey and demonstrated 

 that one attack of experimental measles conferred immunity upon the 

 monkeys. 



Epidemiology and Prevention. There are few infectious diseases 

 as common as measles. Crum 5 has collected statistics which show 

 that measles is responsible for about 1 per cent, of all deaths occurring 

 in the temperate zones. In statistical summaries of 22 countries ex- 

 tending over a period of four years preceding 1910, there were over 

 366,000 deaths attributable to measles of an aggregate population of 

 32,625,651. All races and ages seem to be susceptible, though children 

 are more often infected, and the discrepancy between adults and chil- 

 dren is probably due merely to the fact that most adults have had the 

 disease before they attain adult life. Whenever young adults from 

 rural districts come together in camps, epidemics will occur quite com- 

 parable and more severe than those occurring among school children 

 and asylum children at an earlier period of life. The disease is com- 



8 Anderson and Goldberger, Jour. A. M. A., 57, 1911, 1612. 



4 Blake and Trask, Jour. Exper. Med., 33, 1921, 385, 413 and 621. 



5 ('mm, Ainer. Jour. Pub. Health, 4, 1914, 289. 



