According to the best evidence we have, measles makes its appearance somewhere between the 11th and 12th Centuries when the measles virus diverged (separated) from the rinderpest virus (a sort of measles of cattle that has been eradicated through vaccination). This probably happened when cattle herders spent just a little too much time with their cattle somewhere in the Middle East.
Before we go any further, you need to understand that measles is highly infectious. It’s, like, really infectious. One person can infect up to 18 other people, and the virus floats in the air for up to two (maybe four) hours where an infectious person has been. What’s worse, a person is infectious 3 to 5 days before the onset of the typical measles rash, and 1 to 2 days before the onset of fever. This means that a perfectly healthy-looking person can go around spreading measles and not even know they’re sick.
Because of this, measles likely spread as people with the disease came into contact with population centers, and then as trade occurred between those population centers. Soon enough, measles was found worldwide, with some of the first accounts of it in the Americas in the 1600s. That said, the descriptions of some of the plagues brought to the Americas by Columbus and subsequent invasions do resemble measles. It’s hard to pinpoint when the exact introduction of measles to the Americas was since the invaders and explorers brought smallpox, syphilis and other plagues with them.
As worldwide travel became more accessible to more and more people, measles spread far and wide and established itself in communities where there was a cohort of children large enough born each year for it to continue to spread. It wasn’t just the children that suffered, however. Measles in adults has always had more serious consequences. During the Civil War, about 20,000 cases were reported in Union Soldiers, with about 500 deaths.
By the time the 1900s rolled around, this translated into hundred of thousands of cases worldwide, with thousands of deaths.
It was only when better medical treatment became more available in the mid-1900s in the United States that deaths in American children began to decline.
Measles cases, however, did not decline until the arrival of a vaccine in 1963. From then on, cases and deaths declined to very low levels in the United States and everywhere the vaccine was licensed and administered. However, outbreaks would still occur, concentrated mostly in the unimmunized.
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