A friend texted me to say that she “got whooping cough for Christmas.” I’m 82 and don’t remember knowing anyone with whooping cough. Maybe it was around when I was young, but my own disease related memories are chicken pox—mom taking me to the neighbor’s house to become exposed so I could have it and get over it; measles, which she did not give to me intentionally, but I apparently caught from that same neighbor; and mumps, which I contracted somehow as a young adult—before 1967, when the vaccine was licensed in. I remember itching with the chicken pox, and I remember being shut up in my parents’ bedroom (on the first floor of our tiny house), with the curtains pulled shut tight against damage to my eyes from measles.
Measles is what killed the missionary Whitmans in Walla Walla. Read Rich’s Post →