What were doctors saying about measles before the age of Vaccine Propaganda?

[Mr. Beyondtheory]

1968 28th Edition Black's Medical Dictionary:

Excerpts:



~"In 1966 there were 343,642 cases in England and Wales, with 80 deaths. One attack of measles does not give complete immunity from future attacks, though there is a certain amount of protection, and second attacks are rare."


Infectiousness


~There are few diseases so infectious as measles, and its rapid spread in epidemics is no doubt due to the fact infection is most potent in the earlier stages, even in the first three days, before its real nature hs been shown by the appearance of the rash. Hence the difficulty of timely isolation..."


Early Symptoms


~"(the early symptoms of measles are)...sudden onset of acute catarrh of the mucous membranes. Sneezing, accompanied with a watery discharge, sometimes bleeding from the nose, redness and watering of the eyes, cough of a short, frequent, and noisy character, with little or no expectoration, hoarseness of the voice, and occasionally sickness and diarrhoea, are the chief symptoms of this stage. Along with these there is well-marked febrile disturbance, the temperature being elevated to 102-104F (39-40C), and the pulse rapid, while headache, thirst and restlessness are usually present...In some instances these initial symptoms are so slight they almost escape notice..."


Later Symptoms (the Rash)


~"About the fourth day after the invasion, sometimes later, rarely earlier, the characteristic eruption appears on the skin, being first noticed on the brow, cheeks, chin, also behind the ears, and on the neck. It consists of small spots of a dusky red or crimson colour, slightly elevated above the surface, at first isolated, but tending to become grouped together...The face acquires a swollen and bloated appearance, which taken along with the catarrh of the nostrils and eyes....renders diagnosis (easy).....The eruption spreads downwards over the body and limbs, which are soon thickly studded with the red..patches. Sometimes these become confluent over a consderable surface, giving rise to a larger area of uniform redness. The rash continues to come out for two or three days, and then begins to fade in the order in which it first showed itself"


The Crisis Stage


~"At the commencement of the eruptive stage, the fever, catarrh, and other constitutional disturbances, which were present from the beginning, become aggravated, the temperature often rising to 105F or more, and there are headache, thirst, furred tongue, and soreness of the throat, ....the patient is usually much depressed. These symptoms usually decline as soon as the rash has attained its maximum, and often there occurs a sudden and extensive fall of temperature, indicating that the crisis of the disease has been reached."


Severe form of measles


~"Measles may, however, occur in a very severe or malignant form, in which the symptoms throught out are of urgent character, the rash but feebly developed and of dark-purple hue, while there is great prostration of strength, accompanied with intense catarrh of the respiratory or gastro-intestinal mucous membrane. Such cases, always of serious import, are happily rare, occurring mostly in circumstances of bad hygiene, both as regards the individual and his surroundings. On the other hand, cases of measles are often met of so mild a form throughout that the patient can scarcely be persuaded to submit to treatment."


Complications


~"(measles is of chief importance only because of certain complications), more especially inflammatory affections of the respiratory organs. These are most liable to occur in very young and delicate children.....irritation of the respiratory passages is one of the symptoms characteristic of measles, but that this subsides with the decline of the eruption. Not infrequently, however, these symptoms, instead of abating, become aggravated, and bronchitis..., or pneumonia...imparts to the case a gravity which it did not originally possess. By far the greater proportion of the mortality in measles is due to its complications, of which those just mentioned are the most common, but which also include inflammatory affections of the larynx, and also diarrhoea assuming a dysenteric character."

[Mr. Beyondtheory]

First of all, even 42 years ago in England, when living standards were lower, and there was still some pockets of pretty severe poverty, we can see from the first quote that deaths from measles were pretty low. It wasn't a scary illness. The doctor who authored this believes that the deaths could be attributed to poor living circumstances, bad personal hygiene, already delicate health, and being a nurseling.

The doctor is not concerned about the high fevers of measles in children. He mentions that 40 or 41C is possible, and doesn't say these need to be controlled by analgesics like asprin. In fact he says something that most modern parents would find counterintuitive, and few doctors today would recommend: he recommends mild diaphoretics such as accetate of ammonia and ipecacuanha, and warm baths and drinks, in order to promote sweating! Good grief, he doesn't want to suppress fever.

He recommends also the child being confined to a dark, draught free room which nevertheless is aired, & light nourishing food, in all usual cases of measles.

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

Well done. I will see if I can find and add others to add to the history lesson :D

[Mr. Beyondtheory]

Great. :) Anyone else feel free to add your quotes from the medical past too.

I see in yesterday's Herald newspaper on the front page they carried what the Ministry of Health is putting about, that Measles brings on severe complications in one child in a thousand, and death for one in a thousand.

We can see from the statistic that Black's Med. Dictionary gives that this is highly unlikely. Even 40 years ago when mortality would have been higher because of slightly more primitive medical procedures, 80 divided by 343,642 = 4,295. This means there was a deathrate of one in 4,295.

Not even close to 1:1000 :disbelief:

It is also highly unlikely that the data they collected would've included all actual measles cases because, as the good doctor has written, with many children measles is so mild parents are not easily persuaded their children have or had it.

Thus I think we may fairly safely conclude that deaths from measles in England and Wales in 1966 were far less than 1:5000. This figure casts severe doubt on the idea of measles being capable of killing one in a thousand NZ children today.

[MinorityView]

The 20% hospitalization rate is also bogus. There were 4 million cases of measles per year in the U.S. during the 1950s (averaged out as it went up and down) and there were definitely not 600,000 children a year ending up in the hospital. The actual hospitalization rate, if I remember correctly, was 28,000 children a year. If I'm figuring right, that comes out to .007. What is that in %? 7/10 of 1%, right?

My goodness.

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

Great. :) Anyone else feel free to add your quotes from the medical past too.

I see in yesterday's Herald newspaper on the front page they carried what the Ministry of Health is putting about, that Measles brings on severe complications in one child in a thousand, and death for one in a thousand.crapola.

Even their own data from previous epidemics in 1997, 1997 and 1987 disprove that rubbish.

[Mr. Beyondtheory]

Minorityview: If I'm figuring right, that comes out to .007. What is that in %? 7/10 of 1%, right?



You figured right. 28,000 divided by 4,000,000 = .7% hospitalisation rate. My goodness, can the health dept. really be that poor at maths. How did they come up with 20%?!:scratch:

I was thinking about the mortality figures a bit further. If it was as high as 1 in 5000 or 1 in 10,000 that's not as dangerous as a quite routine medical procedure carried out in NZ hospitals nearly every day...the liver biopsy. They jab people with a wide-gauge needle between the ribs, and take out a sliver of their liver to check for fibrosis and cirrhosis.

The point is they routinely do this to people who often aren't particularly sick, and whose condition could be ascertained just as well via an array of bloodtests, personal symptoms, how they look, ultrasound etc. (There are medical specialists who argue this, saying the test is grossly overused, and should only be used for people who are very sick and have a high % chance of cirrhosis). Doctors are quite casual about giving people who are carriers of Hep. B or C, or have abused alcohol, this test. Yet here is the clanger: liver biopsy officially has a mortality of 3 in 10,000, and serious complications in 3:1000.:jaw: (Most people who get liv. b.s aren't informed of these stark figures, I believe.)


Which would you rather experience? Measles or liver biopsy? :eyeroll:

[Mr. Beyondtheory]

Jane Seward, deputy director of the division of viral diseases at the CDC, excerpt from Aug. 2008 interview in "Scientific American" magazine: Back in the early part of the century, it (measles) killed thousands of people a year. The biggest year was 10,000. Over the years, those deaths declined but in the 1960s, right before the vaccine was developed, it killed 400 to 500 children every year out of 500,000 reported cases at that time. Three to four million cases actually occurred, because not all cases get reported.

Of those 500,000 reported cases, there were 4,000 cases of encephalitis a year. That's brain infection and can have some serious sequellae, like retardation and things like that. Measles can also cause pneumonia…



Jane Seward is definitely one of conventional medicine's big names on viral illnesses. She points out something interesting here, namely that the reported cases are always way less than actual cases. There is no official argument with that.

This means that the figure I got from the 1968 Black's Medical Dictionary for measles cases in '66 is definitely not even close to the actual mark, as I speculated. Going by her (& the CDCs) estimation the actual deathrate for measles in the USA in the early 60s was approx. 1:6,000 to 1:8,000.

And of course a healthy child who lives in a dry house, got breastfed (& thus has a primed immune-system), is not malnourished, doesn't have to breath in cigarette smoke in the household, has enough vitamin C and A in their bodies (ie. they eat a bit of fruit and the odd carrot or pumpkin makes it onto their dinner plates) etc., is going to have far better odds when they get measles, as compared to a child, say, who is a fussy eater and doesn't ever eat orange-coloured vegetables, lives in a damp house, and has to breath in ciggy smoke. Or another child who is on immune-suppressing drugs, or who has a chronic illness.

I think it would be quite reasonable to surmise that those one deaths per 6 to 8 thousand would be in children who have compromised immune-systems, whether it be from poor diet, drugs, poor hygiene, or a chronic health condition. And it is also precisely these children who are sitters for serious adverse vaccine reactions, so vaccinating them to prevent measles isn't the answer.

[Mr. Beyondtheory]

Excerpt from Dr John Gibben's"Care of Children from one to Five" (1961).

“It is much better to have the disease (measles) and get it over when you are young than begin school and have to go into quarantine” ...“Fit Children are rarely ill with measles. They get over it quickly, their general health is little upset, they jiggle about happily in bed and play with their toys and seem quite unconcerned. Immunisation is not without risk..."

Dr Gibbens CV:1946: MB (Cambridge), MRCP (London). Medical Officer to the Babies' Club, Chelsea. Late Chief Assistant to the Children's Department, St Thomas's Hospital and the Infant's Department, Queen Charlotte's Hospital

[Fièvre]

I am not sure the following is of use here (?) :
Although the procedure was rendered superfluous by the development of effective measles vaccines, measles could be aborted or ameliorated by the administration of immune gamma-globulin during the first 7 days of the incubation period (Janeway, 1944). cf http://whqlibdoc.who.int/smallpox/9241561106_chp1.pdf

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

Yes, but Dr Tove Ronne (Lancet) found that if you did that, the recipient had greater numbers of connective tissue disease and cancer later in life....

and it's interseting that IVIg never worked for either smallpox or polio....

[Fièvre]

:dork::dork: !!!

Here is the article of Dr Tove Ronne : http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2885%2990961-4/abstract


Measles virus infection without rash in childhood is related to disease in adult llife

abstact :The presence of measles specific antibodies is usually taken as evidence of typical measles in the past; in the present study it was regarded as evidence of infection with measles virus, but not necessarily of the common disease accompanied by a typical rash. The association between a negative history of measles in childhood and certain diseases later in life was investigated by a historical prospective method, based on school health records combined with self-reporting in adulthood, and tests for specific IgG measles antibody. There was evidence of association between a negative history of measles, exposure in early life (possibly injection of immune serum globulin after exposure), and development of immunoreactive diseases, sebaceous skin diseases, degenerative diseases of bone and cartilage, and certain tumours. It is suggested that the presence of measles virus specific antibodies at the time of acute infection interferes with development of specific cytolytic reactions, and enables intracellular measles virus to survive the acute infection. If this hypothesis is verified, use of immune serum globulin after measles exposure has to be reconsidered. !!!


If this hypothesis is verified?????????......

According to vaccinationnews, this queztion had not been adressed in 2002 cf http://www.vaccinationnews.com/scandals/May_31_02/Scandal18.htm

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

Correct. Why bother to address something, when what that something does, is provide more business for drug companies?

[bbrandonsmom]

I found this on Dr. Sears webpage-so current, not history-

Continue your life as usual and if your child catches it, have comfort in the fact that virtually all cases of measles pass without any complications. Understand that the fatality risk of measles is about 1 in 1000 to 1 in 3000.
Keep your unvaccinated child out of school and at home until the outbreak runs its course.
Get your child vaccinated with either the MMR or the plain measles vaccine ASAP. Many parents who initially decided against the MMR can probably have their child receive the plain Measles vaccine. While most doctors don't carry the plain measles vaccine, the public health department (which normally doesn't offer the plain measles vaccine) is likely going to make the plain measles vaccine available for those parents worried about the whole MMR.
If your child actually was exposed to a known case of measles and is unvaccinated, the public health department may offer your child an immunoglobulin injection (antibodies to fight the virus if it is already inside your child). I am not a big fan of this, however. It is a blood product that is filtered out of donated blood units. It IS purified and tested for infectious diseases, and is probably safe. But getting this shot poses the same very small underlying risk of such a disease getting through the screening process. In my opinion, it is better to just go through the disease instead (unless your child has an underlying immune deficiency that would make measles more risky).