page_title: Measles
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Measles / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Maurice Hilleman (1919–2005), circa 1958, as Chief of the Dept. of Virus Diseases
context_page_description: Measles is a highly contagious infectious disease caused by measles virus. Symptoms usually develop 10–12 days after exposure to an infected person and last 7–10 days. Initial symptoms typically include fever, often greater than 40 °C, cough, runny nose, and inflamed eyes. Small white spots known as Koplik's spots may form inside the mouth two or three days after the start of symptoms. A red, flat rash which usually starts on the face and then spreads to the rest of the body typically begins three to five days after the start of symptoms. Common complications include diarrhea, middle ear infection, and pneumonia. These occur in part due to measles-induced immunosuppression. Less commonly seizures, blindness, or inflammation of the brain may occur. Other names include morbilli, rubeola, red measles, and English measles. Both rubella, also known as German measles, and roseola are different diseases caused by unrelated viruses.
  Measles is an airborne disease which spreads easily from one person to the next through the coughs and sneezes of infected people. It may also be spread through direct contact with mouth or nasal secretions.
context_section_description: Most estimates based on modern molecular biology place the emergence of measles as a human disease sometime after AD 500 (the former speculation that the Antonine Plague of AD 165–180 was caused by measles is now discounted), although recent studies suggest measles potentially first appeared as early as the 4th century BC. The first systematic description of measles, and its distinction from smallpox and chickenpox, is credited to the Persian physician Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi (860–932), who published The Book of Smallpox and Measles. Given what is now known about the evolution of measles, al-Razi's account is remarkably timely, as recent work that examined the mutation rate of the virus indicates the modern measles virus emerged from rinderpest (cattle plague) as a zoonotic disease between AD 1100 and 1200, a period that may have been preceded by limited outbreaks involving a measles virus not yet fully acclimated to humans. This agrees with the observation that measles requires a susceptible population of >500,000 to sustain an epidemic, a situation that occurred in historic times following the growth of medieval European cities.
  Measles is an endemic disease, meaning it has been continually present in a community, and many people develop resistance. In populations not exposed to measles, exposure to the new disease can be devastating. In 1529, a measles outbreak in Cuba killed two-thirds of those natives who had previously survived smallpox. Two years later, measles was responsible for the deaths of half the population of Honduras, and it had ravaged Mexico, Central America, and the Inca civilization.
  Between roughly 1855 and 2005, measles has been estimated to have killed about 200 million people worldwide. Measles killed 20 percent of Hawaii's population in the 1850s. In 1875, measles killed over 40,000 Fijians, approximately one-third of the population. In the 19th century, the disease killed 50% of the Andamanese population. Seven to eight million children are thought to have died from measles each year before the vaccine was introduced.
  In 1914, a statistician for the Prudential Insurance Company estimated from a survey of 22 countries that 1% of all deaths in the temperate zones were caused by measles. He observed also that 1-6% of cases of measles ended fatally the difference depending on age (0-3 being the worst), social conditions (e.g. overcrowded tenements) and pre-existing health conditions.
  In 1954, the virus causing the disease was isolated from a 13-year-old boy from the United States, David Edmonston, and adapted and propagated on chick embryo tissue culture. To date, the World Health Organization recognizes eight clades named A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and H. Twenty-three strains of the measles virus have been identified and designated within these clades. While at Merck, Maurice Hilleman developed the first successful vaccine.  Licensed vaccines to prevent the disease became available in 1963. An improved measles vaccine became available in 1968. Measles as an endemic disease was eliminated from the United States in 2000, but continues to be reintroduced by international travelers. In 2019 there were at least 1,241 cases of measles in the United States distributed across 31 states with over three quarters in New York.
caption: Maurice Hilleman's measles vaccine is estimated to prevent one million deaths per year.[147]
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "642", "Image ImageLength": "978", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS6 (Windows)", "Image DateTime": "2018:07:26 12:30:22", "Image ExifOffset": "232", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "382", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4267", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "642", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "978"}