in the disease. It may be worth while to repeat
that the greatest danger from measles consists in the possibility of
lung complications, and infinite care should be taken to keep the
patient shielded from drafts and free from overexertion until recovery
is complete. Like scarlet fever, the skin peels off, although not to the
same extent, and the small particles are capable of transmitting the
disease. Probably, also, the secretion from the nose and throat will
transmit the disease, so that it is the height of folly to allow a sick
person to use a handkerchief, for example, and then to use the same
handkerchief to wipe the baby's nose when he comes into the sick room.
All dishes and clothing of every sort should be boiled or steamed, and
to be rendered harmless they should be soaked in a disinfecting solution
before being taken from the sick room. The room itself, after being
vacated, should be disinfected and the walls washed, as already
prescribed.

_Whooping cough._

Whooping cough is unlike the other three diseases in that it is a
nervous trouble, and probably the germ or the poison formed by the germ
attacks the nervous system, and particularly one great nerve connecting
the lungs and stomach. This is why the spasm of coughing is frequently
followed by vomiting, and the only remedy which is of value in whooping
cough is a nerve depressant which will diminish the activity of the
nervous system without at the same time interfering with the strength or
vigor of the patient. On account of this connection between the lungs,
whose spasmodic ejection of air seems to threaten the entire collapse of
the little patient, and the stomach, so alarming do the repeated fits of
vomiting appear that often this feature of the disease is even more
serious than the coughing, pathetic as it is with younger children. In
some cases the stomach cannot retain nourishment long enough to feed the
body, and the child literally wastes away unless the period of the
disease runs out before the child starves to death.

It is often weeks instead of days before the disease can be recognized.
Then, if it develops in its usual form, begins the coughing so
characteristic of the malady and the hard straining whoop so painful to
listen to. Occasionally this coughing may be severe enough to cause a
rupture of a blood vessel; but ordinarily, unless the stomach is
affected by sympathy, no great danger need be feared. Fresh air,
moderate exercise, good fo