from Copenhagen to Thorshavn with the disease. He infected two friends,
and the epidemic increased by leaps and bounds, until within a very short
time over 6,000 persons out of a population of 7,782 were attacked. Almost
every house on the island became a hospital, and the only persons who
passed through the visitation unscathed were old inhabitants who had had
the disease as children 65 years before. Not a single old person who was
not protected by a previous attack and who was exposed to the infection
failed to contract the disease.

This is one of the oldest ailments with which man has been afflicted. In
fact the word "measles" traces its genealogy back through the German
"masern" to the Sanskrit "masura," a word meaning "spots." The writings of
the ancient Arabian physicians are replete with mention of this disease.
The Italians, who evidently regarded it no more seriously than we do,
called it "morbillo," which means "little sickness."

Time and again measles has been widely diffused on Asiatic and European
soil, and shortly after the colonization of America it appeared in our
colonies. Many are the quaint records of its visitations, not the least
interesting of which is a letter which appeared in the Boston Evening
Post, November 12, 1739, entitled "A letter about good management under
the distemper of measles at this time spreading in the country, here
published for the benefit of the poor and such as may want help of able
physicians." It is signed "Your hearty friend and servant," and the
authorship is attributed to Cotton Mather. It is stated that this letter
is a reprint of one which Dr. Mather wrote prior to his death in 1728.

At present the disease is distributed over the entire habitable globe,
from Iceland on the north to Tierra del Fuego on the south. It occurs most
often and more severely in the colder months, probably because at such
times people are more closely crowded together under more insanitary
conditions. When introduced among a people who have never suffered from it
before, its ravages are frightful, as in the case of the inhabitants of
certain of the Fiji Islands, who, upon being exposed to the infection,
fell ill and died by thousands, so that it is estimated that 20,000 deaths
occurred in four months. The epidemic ceased only when almost every person
on the island had been infected.

During the year 1910 the death rates from this disease in the States of
Rhode Island and North Carolina we