The treatment of measles has, we think, been mistaken and misrepresented. It has been considered as a peripneumonic disease, and the most liberal bleedings have been ordered: but the peripneumony only comes on by accident, or by mismanagement; for the disease is purely catarrhal. The common measles rarely require bleeding; and, in general, the treatment is the combined management of a catarrhal and an eruptive disease. An emetic is undoubtedly at first required, and the mild relaxing diaphoretics, with neutral salts, continued through the whole course, will carry the disease safely to a conclusion. The only remedies necessary, independent of these, are laxatives; which, if steadily persisted in from the beginning, will very certainly prevent the occurrence of those violent peripneumonic symptoms, which sometimes come on about the eighth or ninth day. In general it is sufficient to procure two or three stools daily; but the author of this article, when his son, whose tenderness, joined with apprehension of weak lungs, rendered the measles a dangerous disease, was affected, carried the evacuations farther. He watched him hourly, and found him always relieved by stools, so that about the disappearance of the spots, six or eight motions were procured daily. He thought that the recovery was peculiarly quick: the boy was soon brought into the air, and in three days from that period not a cough was heard. No other medicine was administered, except once a slight opiate when the cough was peculiarly troublesome. He mentions the single fact, but without advising an imitation, except where the attendance can be equally unremitted.

The usual remedies of saline diuretics, with antimo-nials, and occasionally opiates, spermaceti, etc. must also be given, if the practitioner would not be thought ignorant or inattentive; but the laxatives should never be omitted. Should, notwithstanding the evacuations, the peripneumonic symptoms come on, bleeding will be necessary, in very young children by means of leeches; but after the age of five or six, by the lancet, with blisters, and the other remedies of pneumonia. No such instance has, however, occurred to us in an extensive practice; nor to those from whom we learned it, whose practice, equally long, had been more extensive. We have mentioned a diarrhoea as a favourable symptom, and we may now add, that it should not be checked, but regulated according to the strength. The catarrhal inflammation may rise to suffocation; and in that case the emetics must be repeated, and blisters applied to the neck or the upper part of the sternum. A blister to the pit of the stomach is generally an useless application.

When the cold regimen was introduced for the small pox, some rash innovators transferred the analogy to measles, often inducing the violent peripneumony they intended to avoid. Yet a very warm regimen is injurious; for we have shown that it is inconsistent with the diapnoe, which in every febrile disease is so peculiarly salutary. The room should be large and airy, the child kept in an erect or a slightly reclining posture, according as either can be borne from the load of the head. The drinks should not be hot, but warm only, and the food light, diluent, and in a liquid form. If the cough, is troublesome, breathing the steams of warm water will be useful, but these steams should not be drawn hot from an inhaler. The warm water should be put in a bason, and the head covered with a flannel large enough to hang over its edges. The eyes will in this way be also relieved by the relaxing vapour.

Should, from debility or cold, the spots recede, convulsions, pneumonia, and sometimes phrenitis, will come on. In such cases, blisters, with warm cordials, and the warm bath, will be necessary; but this occurrence is peculiarly rare.

The continuance of diarrhoea, after the disease, is sometimes troublesome; and the sagacity of Sydenham has been highly extolled, who recommended bleeding

"because the halitus of the inflamed blood was carried to the intestines." We have never found the purging troublesome when the bowels have been kept free during the disease; and when it has occurred, bleeding seems to have exhausted the little strength that remained, often without relieving the diarrhoea. In this case a generous, but not a highly stimulating, diet, bathing the feet, and giving small doses of Dover's powder, have . succeeded, interposing occasionally gentle laxatives.

The rubeola fine catarvho, in Dr. Willan's opinion, is not true measles, nor does this disease emancipate the patient from being afterwards affected with the real complaint. Indeed the very vague distinctions of rashes will not enable us always to discriminate from the eruption alone, and to this, with the catarrh, we would add some affection of the eyes before we pronounced a child safe. The morbillous fever without the eruption is only a violent catarrh, and equally liable to deceive. The nirles, as we have said, is equally a distinct disorder from rubeola.

Dark livid spots are sometimes intermixed with the true eruptions, and in this case an alarm has been spread of putrid measles; but these little petechia are usually attended with no danger, and a light infusion of bark, with the vitriolic acid, soon restores the colour. Real putrid measles have been described, but Dr. Willan has shown very clearly that in each instance the disease has really been scarlatina. We cannot deny the existence of putrid measles, since we have frequently seen putrid peripneumony. The plan of treatment, however, should it occur, will be nearly the same; but we cannot enlarge on a disease which no one seems to have seen, and which may never occur.

It has been proposed to inoculate measles like small pox, and the blood, the acrid serum from the eyes, and the matter from miliary vesicles, sometimes interspersed between the true morbillous eruption, have been employed. Each has succeeded, but more often failed; nor does the disease, when produced, appear more mild. The attempt, therefore, has not been frequently made, and to avoid a complaint usually so mild, such precautions are not necessary.

See Hoffman and Sydenham, on the Measles; Home's Medical Facts; Tissot's Advice to the People; London Medical Observations and Inquiries, vol. iv. p. 132 - 135, and p. 247 - 260; Medical Museum, vol. ii. p. 46 - 48; Cullen's First Lines, edit. 4. vol. ii. p. 173; Edinburgh Medical Essays, vol. iv. art. 2; London Medical Observations, vol. iv. art. 11; Willan on Cutaneous Diseases, part i. order 111.