Word: diphtheria
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...vaccination centers. Such gimmickry has the full blessings of the Carter Administration, which has set as a goal the inoculation by the fall of 1979 of 90% of all American youngsters-not only against measles but against five other avoidable diseases as well: polio, whooping cough, German measles, diphtheria and tetanus. Says HEW Secretary Joseph A. Califano Jr.: "Our national failure to protect our young from preventable diseases is shocking [and] a national disgrace...
Immunization levels for measles, diphtheria, rubella and--most frightening--polio, have been falling for several years. In 1964 78.6 per cent of all children aged one to four had been vaccinated against polio, but by 1975 that figure had fallen to 63 per cent; many experts cite 80 per cent as the minimum level needed to prevent outbreaks. In Boston, a 1975 study showed that levels were lowest in the poor, black areas of Roxbury and North Dorchester, where in two schools surveyed the immunization level had fallen to 15 per cent. In inner cities and rural slums throughout...
Until such bold adventurers as Verrazano and Hudson penetrated its unpolluted waters, North America enjoyed extraordinary freedom from epidemics. In pre-Columbian times there had been no plague (Black Death), cholera, yellow fever, malaria, typhoid, tuberculosis, diphtheria or even measles...
Average life expectancy at birth was 34.5 years for men and 36.5 years for women. Fifty percent of deaths occurred in those under ten years of age. Infectious diseases decimated the population. Smallpox and yellow fever were most feared. Tuberculosis, cholera and dysentery, typhoid, diphtheria, measles and mumps were ever present. Malaria was as common in New England as on the Southern plantations. In 1721, almost half the population of Boston caught smallpox, and more than 7% died. Yellow fever wiped out 10% of the population of Philadelphia...
...purpose: the "borning room"-much used because the children came one after the other and, alas, died far more often than is now the case. Historians estimate that year in, year out, about a third or more of all children died in infancy-in typhoid and smallpox epidemics, of diphtheria, dysentery and respiratory ailments. Measles exacted a frightful toll. And, of course, parents were helpless to do much except pray and wait. The medical "treatments" of the day were themselves a major source of sickness and even death: bloodletting, purging and bizarre concoctions...