From a Distance

Ailments and Illnesses - I blame The Flannel Childhood illnesses were treated seriously in our family; who knew when death might stalk around the corner or when polio might pinion the four of us into iron lungs. Grandma had lost her elder sister as a child, Dad had uncles who were carried off by common infections before ever reaching manhood. Mum was very lucky to survive her dose of Spanish flu in 1919. Both of our parents were brought up in the pre-antibiotic era and had seen how rapidly a child could succumb to infections with no powerful drugs available to fight them. In the War, Churchill’s pneumonia had been successfully treated by the new sulphonamide antibiotics prepared by May & Baker. This was simply known as M&B and I remember how these tablets were spoken of with near reverence. We’d been vaccinated against smallpox and diphtheria though not whooping coffee and in the late 1950s we’d had the BCG vaccine against tuberculosis yet plenty o