Some historians believe that a plague that killed a large part of the Athenian army in 430 to 429 BC was measles. As urbanization occurred in subsequent centuries, the proximity or larger populations nurtured epidemics with continued circulation of virus in cities. There were massive epidemics in the Roman Empire starting in 165 and in 251 AD, and two similar epidemics in China in 162 and 310.
Jews physician such as Al Yehudi had recognized the illness but without distinction between it and other rash disordered.
Measles was first documented by an Arabic physician called Rhazes.
Rhazes lived in the 10th century but he quoted other authors on measles form as far back s Al Yehudi, who lived in the 7th century.
He distinguished between smallpox and measles even though he believed that the two conditions were part of one morbid process.
Rhazes referred it the disease as widespread throughout the East and the same opinion is expressed by Avicenna and other Arabic writers of the tenth and eleventh centuries.
By the 17th century, some European also physicians had identified the differences between measles and small pox.
In 1846, a Danish physician Peter Panum studied a measles outbreak on the Faroe Islands and was the first to describe the clinical presentation, incubation and infectious nature of measles.
The introduction of measles vaccine in 1963 and its subsequent widespread use led to dramatic declines in the reported incidence of measles.
History of measles
