CLEVELAND — In the years before routine vaccination, from what I understand, there was a great deal of handholding and hand wringing at the bedsides of dying children.
Generations later, we have now forgotten — if we ever knew — that there wasn’t much else to be done. The only remaining firsthand evidence are the dates engraved on the smallest gravestones.
I came of age in a different time. In my entire career, I never once saw a case of measles, polio, diphtheria. Thanks to vaccination, I never had to comfort anyone who had lost a child or sibling to these diseases. I never had to commiserate with a parent whose children spent the whole winter in bed…