The news about measles in Texas brought back memories from when I worked at the Student Health Center at the University of Maine in Orono back in the early 90s. We had a significant outbreak then. Just about all the students who got sick had been vaccinated as young children and had mild symptoms. The rashes were fairly subtle in some of them. Our nurses and my physician colleagues often called on me to help confirm the diagnosis, since I was the only one who had ever seen a case, in fact several, during medical school and residency in Sweden 1974-1981
Sweden got its first measles vaccine in 1971, but it wasn’t widely adopted. In 1982, a two dose regimen was introduced, combined with the mumps and rubella vaccines (MMR).
In the US, the first measles vaccine was introduced in 1963, followed by an improved version in 1968.
After a big measles outbreak among vaccinated school children here in 1989, two doses were recommended and the MMR was introduced.
Since I was born before 1957, I am presumed immune to all the common childhood viruses we are now vaccinating against. The philosophy then was, get it over and done with, so children were purposely exposed to sick children, especially chicken pox. These occasions were called “pox parties”. I remember being told, both before and during medical school that it would be good to get mumps before puberty and especially before adulthood, because mumps sometimes doesn’t just affect our large parotid salivary glands but also a man’s testicles (ouch).
Here’s a piece I wrote in 2014 about illnesses with rashes:
A Rash of Rashes











With the double vaccination route adopted in the late 1980s and 90s, measles outbreaks among vaccinated children are extremely unlikely, right? And much preferable to encouraging “natural” vaccination via exposure, which will lead to severe illness and death among the unfortunate few, as we’ve seen in the current Texas outbreak.
Right.