About 10 days later the children who have exposed themselves to the
disease begin to sicken. They, too, have red, watery, sensitive eyes and
puffy eyelids. In fact, in rather severe cases the whole face has a rather
swollen, puffed appearance. The throat feels parched and a dry, irritating
cough increases the discomfort. The child is apt to come home from school
feeling drowsy and irritable, not infrequently complains of chilly
sensations, and may even have a chill. At night the irritation increases,
the child is feverish, the whites of the eyeballs show little red lines
upon them, and the little sufferer has the appearance of being just ready
to cry.
If the anxious mother takes the child to the window in the morning, raises
the curtain, and examines the little one’s throat she will see that the
hard palate and back of the throat are a dull, angry red. Perhaps there
are a few little red spots on the hard palate, and if the mother will look
closely at the lining membrane of the cheek she will see some small
white-tipped, reddish spots. These are called "Koplik’s" spots, and are
one of the signs of measles.
The child is kept from school that day, and that night his fever is higher
than it was the night before. He rolls and tosses about the bed and wakes
up his mother a good many times to ask for a drink of water. This sort of
thing continues for 3 or 4 days; then, one morning when the child is
having its bath the mother sees some little dusky red spots along the hair
line. They look a good deal like flea bites. Within 24 hours this rash is
spread over the body and the child looks very much bespeckled and swollen.
In from 5 to 7 days the rash begins to fade, and within 3 or 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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