. The practice of medicine; a text-book for practitioners and students, with special reference to diagnosis and treatment . cal Journal, February lo, 1900, 98 INFECTIOUS DISEASES Symptoms.—The period of incubation of measles varies, but is com-monly between seven and 14 days. Rarely it is a day or two longer. Aprodrome, if present, in measles is of short duration. It may be manifestedby sneezing, fretfulness, chilliness, and feverishness; or, if the child is oldenough to express itself, by headache. Then comes, on the first day, theinitial or prodromal fever, a peculiarity of which is a remiss
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. The practice of medicine; a text-book for practitioners and students, with special reference to diagnosis and treatment . cal Journal, February lo, 1900, 98 INFECTIOUS DISEASES Symptoms.—The period of incubation of measles varies, but is com-monly between seven and 14 days. Rarely it is a day or two longer. Aprodrome, if present, in measles is of short duration. It may be manifestedby sneezing, fretfulness, chilliness, and feverishness; or, if the child is oldenough to express itself, by headache. Then comes, on the first day, theinitial or prodromal fever, a peculiarity of which is a remission on the thirdday. This is shown by the appended cut from Eichhorst. But very early,and even almost suddenly, coryza, with red and watery eyes, and photo-phobia present themselves, closely followed by troublesome cough and cor-responding feverishness reaching 103° and 104° F. (39.4° and 40° C).Much less frequently than in scarlet fever is there vomiting, and the tongueis apt to be furred. The cough is sometimes croupy. Convulsions veryrarely usher in the disease. In the very beginning Kopliks spots arepresent.. Fig. is.—Temperature Chart of Measles.—{Eichhorst.) On the fourth day from the onset the eruption makes its appearance.With the eruption the fever usually increases for 24 to 48 hours. Itappears first in the face in the form of papules and blotches, which coalescemore or less imperfectly, leaving sometimes islands of white skin betweenthem. Sometimes after coalescence the eruption quite resembles that ofscarlet fever. Under any circumstances the boundary between the erup-tion and the sound skin is uneven and crescentic. The eruption is somewhatraised above the surface, and the whole effect is to make the face appearswollen. This elevation of surface at times becomes distinctly papular andeven shot-like, resembling closely the papular stage of smallpox. In fact,this appearance has quite often lead to a diagnosis of smallpox, which 12hours later had to be withd