If you and old boy (girl) like me this may be a trip down memory lane. If you are fortunate to be of our younger generation please step into the time machine.
And check out earlier chapters:
As of yesterday I have written 74,887 words. I think I have about another 10,000 to go.
Anyway........
Chickenpox, Mumps, Scarlet Fever, German Measles, Polio, Meningitis, Smallpox, Whooping Cough, Rabies !
As a kid it was good news to be ill ! Being ill meant officially skiving off school, in my day nobody liked school. (Not even the teachers I strongly suspect !) Today we call these childhood illness but way back then it was just a case of being poorly and poorly meant time off school. Yippie ! Today we have the MMR (Measles-Mumps-Rubella) vaccination but in the 1950’s and early 1960’s medical attitude was catch these illnesses as early as possible and get them out of the way. Immunity would then protect you from them in later life.
Some diseases were a passport to a couple of weeks off school while some were feared and a passport to disability and even death. We kids encouraged the former but tried not to think of the latter.
As I invite you to meander with me again down memory lane I have brainstormed nine illnesses all kinds of sickness my generation was familiar with. Today through the love of our NHS they are an enigma.
Chickenpox, Mumps, Scarlet Fever, Smallpox, German Measles, Polio, Meningitis, Whopping Cough, Rabies !
I spoke about Measles in an earlier chapter so we will start with Chickenpox. I am a prolific writer, I am NOT a medic so these memories are from a layman supported by the odd Google search !
Chickenpox. No this was not contracted from chickens or even from their eggs. I think I was about ten years of age when the pox laid its eggs on my skin. They began as a rash on my face, arms and stomach. Great, three weeks off school. As the rash turned into pimples those pimples started to itch. The standard remedy was to paint a pink liquid called calamine lotion onto each spot. I think I am remembering correctly when I say this was done by dipping a small paint brush into the bottle then dabbing it on surface of each spot. The spots would move to the next stage having a scab on their tops. It was strictly forbidden but I can assure you there was not a single kid who did not pick the tops off those scarring pimples and keep them by their bedside as a trophy of illness.
Today in the UK the chickenpox vaccine is not currently part of the routine childhood immunisation but the disease is nowhere near as common as it was sixty years ago when I was a kid. I bet the kids of today are a bit better behaved than we were and do not pick their spots. Yeh, we all wanted chicken pox and the time off school it granted to we kids.
My Nan suffered from Shingles which is an adult variant of Chickenpox. Shingles is caused when the chickenpox virus is reactivated. After a person has had chickenpox, the virus lies dormant in certain nerves for many years. Shingles is more common in people with weakened immune systems and in people over the age of fifty. I am well over the age of fifty (Unfortunately) but Shingles I will not be getting. Free on the NHS my doctor has vaccinated me against it.
Mumps. I did indeed contract mumps and no doubt it was the celebrated Doctor Reeves who diagnosed my condition and sped me back to health but, try as I have, I am unable to pull into my mind any clear recollection. My mother told me there were such things as mumps parties where infected children spent time with friends so passing on the disease and getting it over and done with.
I would emphasise that this is a trip down memory lane with such memories being personal, after sixty (Sorry I keep going on about me age don’t I !) or so years while the memories exist I can not rule out my wearing rose tinted glasses or in the case of the next disease dark glasses.
Scarlet Fever. Doing a little bit of on-line research I found this statement. Although scarlet fever was once considered a serious childhood illness, antibiotic treatments have made it less threatening. Still, if left untreated, scarlet fever can result in more-serious conditions that affect the heart, kidneys and other parts of the body.
This was one disease a kid in my generation did not want to catch even if it meant not having any time off school ! Quoting from above: Scarlet Fever was once considered a serious childhood illness. You bet it was ! If you caught this illness your bedding had to be taken out into the garden and burned. I can not remember it happening to anyone I knew but that was the legend we little kids knew and feared.
Travelling to Birmingham city centre on the ‘bus I clearly remember passing Witton Isolation Hospital. That was a place of fear, a hospital which as we kinds understood admitted more patients than it discharged.
Wikipedia, the font of all knowledge, enhances our journey down memory lane.
Built in 1894 Witton Isolation Hospital was initially in a
semi-rural district but by the 1930’s the site was surrounded by the newly
built Kingstanding and Perry Common
housing developments.
Witton Isolation Hospital was used sporadically during the twentieth century including the outbreak of smallpox that occurred in the city in 1962. The last cases quarantined there were during January and February 1966 following an outbreak that originated at the University of Birmingham Medical School. Witton Isolation Hospital was eventually superseded by the UK's first National Isolation Hospital established in 1966. On 4th May 1966 the last patient was discharged.
Smallpox. That memory above, vague as perhaps it is, brings me to share something vivid, Birmingham’s outbreak of smallpox !
When smallpox broke out in Birmingham there was a degree of panic. I write these words during the Covid Pandemic which is far, far more serious in 2022 than that smallpox outbreak of sixty years ago. In 2022 we have not seen panic but in 1962 we did, it was everywhere – panic I mean. Families lined up for hundreds of yards outside their doctor’s surgery to be given a vaccination. These were not as well organised as we have experienced in covid, they were chaotic. Made chaotic through panic within the community.
It was Edward Jenner, a doctor living in Gloucestershire, who noticed women working with cows developed cowpox which was a mild infection. Those who had contracted cowpox did not catch smallpox. 1n 1796 he performed the world’s first vaccination injecting patients with cowpox.
As school the deputy headmaster, Mr Sullivan, went from class to class telling children about Edward Jenner and calming their panic.
The last person to die of smallpox in the UK passed away in 1978.
We call it Rubella today and all are routinely vaccinated against the illness. Back in my childhood it was called German Measles. Although I was not born until 1950 war with Germany was a recent memory for the older generations. There was a certain derision calling this disease German Measles but I never caught it and am not aware of any children around me who did.
Polio, however, was something all children knew of and all children feared. Poliomyelitis, we all called it polio, affected the central nervous system causing paralysis. I knew of one girl who lost the use of her legs from the disease and was confined to a wheel chair. If the paralysis hit the lungs the muscles did not work meaning the patient was unable to breathe and would quickly die. Patients could be paced in a pressure chamber, an iron lung, which pressed down then released that pressure on the chest forcing the lungs to inhale and exhale. We kids all feared our lives ending with our being inside an iron lung.
I was a teacher. I can see him now, his dark wavy teenage hair sitting at a desk on the back row of my English class. It was Friday afternoon, the last lesson of the day. The following week his form tutor produced a cassette tape recorded into which his classmates spoke messages of hope which would be played to him while he lay unconscious in hospital. He did not wake up. A week later I stood with the headmaster and a group of pupils as his funeral passed the school. Meningitis.
Another student contracted the disease but he recovered which was a blessing.
As a child I knew of this illness but never thought it would find me. There was a boy of my age who had contracted it and only recovered in part. He was left with a series of disabilities and walked with callipers on his legs. It left him with brain damage and learning disabilities. His father was a doctor who worked with Doctor Reeves. The horror of meningitis did not discriminate.
In her childhood my mother’s sister died from meningitis.
Cases in 2020 were uncommon. Looking at the government statistics no person in the age range of my student contracted the illness and nobody died from the illness during 2020.
Whooping Cough. Everyone in my generation had heard of whooping cough but none of us knew what it was. All these years later I still do not know what it is. Do you my readers know what it is ?
Whooping cough, apparently, is very serious especially for babies and young kids. Whooping cough can cause pneumonia, seizures, brain damage and death. Babies younger than one year of age who get whooping cough may be hospitalised and may die.
How common is whooping cough in UK ?
Whooping cough used to be very common in the UK. But since vaccinations against the disease were introduced in the 1950’s the number of people getting it each year has been much lower. Although it's still less common than it used to be, cases of whooping cough have increased over the last few years.
And finally in this trip down memory lane - Rabies ! Human rabies is extremely rare in the UK. The last case of classical rabies acquired in this country was more than a century ago in 1902. Cases occurring since then have all been acquired abroad, usually through dog bites. Since 1946 twenty-six cases have been reported in the United Kingdom, all imported. It is strange then how in the 1950’s we lads feared the illness and, as crazy as this may sound, we feared it with a smile. Humans contract it from infected dogs. While common in the US with Britain being an island the disease was not to be found in the dog population. The fear was that pet smuggling would spread it across the English Channel. Nobody wanted to catch rabies as the injections were given in the belly. Owch !
And with that I will bring this wander down memory lane to an end.
Doctor, doctor ! I think I am a bell ! Go home and take these pills. If you’re not better soon give me a ring.
Doctor, doctor ! I think I'm a dog. Okay, have a seat. I can't, I'm not allowed on the furniture !
Doctor,
doctor ! I've got broccoli stuck in my ear ! Looks like you're
not eating properly.
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