Measles

What I find most tragicomical, is that a nation that is almost defined by it's herd behaviour, should have so much difficulty with the concept of herd immunity.

I remember being taken to visit a friend with measles in order to get it. Old fashioned immunization!!

ferret wrote:That's the way my mum did it too. I got to visit all my friends who were sick with measles, chicken pox, etc. and got measles, chicken pox etc.
I wonder, though, if we also had somewhat of a kickstart from our mothers who had also been exposed. The so called "childhood" diseases then seemed to be of a milder variety than exists now. Or perhaps our immune systems were already stronger because we weren't kept in such sterile germ free environments.

From a pediatrician I knew: "she lies at my feet on a sterilized sheet cutting teeth on the tip of my shoe".

ferret wrote:That's the way my mum did it too. I got to visit all my friends who were sick with measles, chicken pox, etc. and got measles, chicken pox etc.
I wonder, though, if we also had somewhat of a kickstart from our mothers who had also been exposed. The so called "childhood" diseases then seemed to be of a milder variety than exists now. Or perhaps our immune systems were already stronger because we weren't kept in such sterile germ free environments.

From a pediatrician I knew: "she lies at my feet on a sterilized sheet cutting teeth on the tip of my shoe".

Canada_Mike wrote:I remember being taken to visit a friend with measles  in order to get it. Old fashioned immunization!!

Yep. Mom made it sound like a party.

Gringal, You got it. My mother a geriatric and nut bar Registered Nurse, her specialities, out of Eastern Ontario, escaping "the FARM", in 1929. I have an image of her brother taking her off to that experience in his motorcycle sidecar. She GOT immunization by dirt. 1956, I drank out of a ditch in Rexdale, a suburb of TO, adjacent to our spiffy new post war subdivision. Now, maybe not so much. I found a little can, kind of cleaned it off, and drank from it. Dirt got ugly since then.