MEASLES 
BOARD OF HEALTH, 
32 Pemberton Square, 
Boston, June 1, 1883. 
The Board of Health issues the following circular of recommendations, with the hope that those who are not 
familiar with the proper means to be used in cases of Measles to prevent the spread of the disease, may be 
benefited thereby. 
This disease is like Small-pox and Scarlet Fever in its power to spread from person to person by contagion 
or infection. 
It may be contracted directly from the person who is ill with the disease, or it may be taken from the room, 
clothing or anything that has been used by or about the sick person, and which has not been thoroughly disin- 
fected . 
It attacks persons of all ages and at all seasons of the year. 
It manifests itself in about a week after exposure to the disease, and, as a rule, occurs but once in the same 
person. 
When a case of Measles occurs, put the patient in a room apart from the other inmates of the house and 
allow no person to enter such room, except the nurse and physician. Have the sick chamber properly warmed, 
exposed to the sunlight, well aired and relieved of all unnecessary furniture and other articles which cannot be 
cleansed without injury. 
All clothing removed from the patient, or the bed, should be at once placed in boiling water, or in a tub of 
disinfecting fluid, - 3 pounds of sulphate of zinc and pounds of common salt to each 10 gallons of water. 
Water-closetsand privies in the house should be disinfected frequently with a solution of copperas, - two pounds 
to a gallon of water. Every kind of filth in or about the house should be removed and disinfectants freely used. 
Children in the family should not attend school, or mingle with other children until the patient has wholly 
recovered, and all infected articles have been disinfected. 
On the recovery or death of the patient, the most thorough disinfection should follow. The room and all 
articles in it should be at once subjected to the fumes of burning sulphur as follow's : Close the room tightly, 
and burn two pounds of sulphur to each thousand cubic feet of space. 
After four or six hours open the room and expose it to free currents of air. 
Anything that can be boiled without injury may be so treated. The walls and ceilings should be dry rubbed 
or lime washed, and the floors washed with some disinfecting liquid. When death occurs the body should be im- 
mediately placed in a tight coffin, with disinfectants, and the coffin tightly and finally closed. 
No public funeral should ever take place at the house where the patient died, until the coffin has been tightly 
sealed, and the most thorough disinfection has taken place. 
Nurses ought to be particularly careful to remove all infection from themselves and their clothing before 
leaving the house. 
Note.- The fumigation by sulphur will be done by the Board of Health, if desired, free of expense. 
By order of the Board of Health. 
SAMUEL H. DURGIN, M. D., 
Chairman.