CHARNEY HALL Medical Matters
The Injection I can’t recall when and I can’t remember how I found myself one ill fated day, standing at the end of a queue outside Matron’s office, located mid-way down the first floor corridor. My fear of needles has never really left me to this day and in the 1950s the sugar lump had not been invented and so, to my horror, we were to be given our first shot of anti-polio vaccine by injection into the upper arm. With the cold steel of needles came the smell of cotton wool soaked in antiseptic spirits and kidney shaped stainless steel trays. Dr Jonas Salk, an American, was responsible for developing the vaccine and the torture that went with it but we were told that he was an eminent scientist and the procedure was perfectly safe. What we did know was that it was better than catching that terrible disease in the local swimming pool*. The government of the day were also culpable as they had decreed that all children should be vaccinated in a...