What is the history of measles?

Answer 1

Measles produces a red-brown spotty rash. Measles can lead to very serious complications that can sometimes be fatal. These include bacterial infection in the lungs (pneumonia) and the brain (encephalitis). It's estimated that around one in every 5,000 people with measles will die as a result of a serious complication.

Early physicians in Asia and North Africa identified and diagnosed measles, which was similar to smallpox. Modern scientists would later suggest that measles evolved after the rise of early civilization in the Middle East and may have come from animals; the virus was highly similar to rinderpest, which infected cattle.

In 340, Chinese alchemist Ko Hung described the difference between smallpox and measles; a Christian priest, Ahrun, did the same in Egypt about 300 years later. In 910, the Persian physician Rhazes published the most widely celebrated early diagnoses of the two diseases.1492: In a pattern that would be repeated across the world for centuries, Christopher Columbus and his fellow European explorers arrived in the Americas, bringing a raft of deadly diseases — including measles —with them.

Native Americans had no natural immunity to many of these diseases. Measles became even more efficient killers in the New World. By some estimates, the Native American population fell by as much as 95% over the next 150 years due to disease.