4 days
thereafter is entirely gone away, leaving behind a faint mottling of the
skin. This is followed by a peeling off of the outer layer of the skin in
little bran-like pieces. This process is called desquamation, and lasts
about a week or 10 days.

In the meantime the fever has gone away, and as soon as the child has
finished scaling he is permitted to go out and play with the other
children, and before long is back at school. The foregoing is a
description of a mild case.

If measles assume a malignant type, as it sometimes does among the
nonrobust, it may be ushered in by convulsions, very high fever, and an
excessive development of all the ordinary symptoms, or the rash when it
appears, instead of being a good healthy-looking red, may be a
bluish-black discoloration which looks like a recent bruise.
Broncho-pneumonia, the most common and the most fatal of all the
complications of measles, is very apt to occur. The cough is very painful,
and death quickly relieves the sufferer.

The two forms of the disease which have just been cited are in no way
exaggerated and unfortunately they are of far too common occurrence. The
first child received the infection directly in the harmless games at the
party by coming in intimate contact with a child who was just coming down
with measles at a time when, according to the researches of Anderson and
Goldberger in the Hygienic Laboratory of the United States Public Health
Service, the infecting virus is most active. Their work seems to show that
the infection does not persist after the fever has gone away.

While all of the severe cases may not be as grave as the one which was
cited above, it must be admitted, nevertheless, that broncho-pneumonia is
the great menace of measles. Fifty-odd years ago Gregory wrote "I am sure
I speak much within bounds when I say that nine-tenths of the deaths by
measles occur in consequence of pneumonia." Less frequently there are
other complications, and the eyes, ears, the central nervous system,
heart, and the skin may any one of them suffer. Sometimes there is
gangrene at the corners of the mouth and this may result in death or
horrible deformity.

Measles, then, is a serious disease, sparing practically no exposed person
who has not had it. In 1846 it attacked the Faroe Islands, and the record
of that visitation is both remarkable and instructive. The island had been
free from the disease for 65 years, when a Danish cabinetmaker returned